Research study
DIY garage door repair injuries: what the case series shows
Federal rules cover a garage door closing on someone. The medical records we found describe people hurt while taking one apart.
Written by HyreGarage Research Desk Primary-source research and literature review
Audited by HyreGarage Research Desk Citation, scope and retrieval-date audit
The finding
Fixing your own garage door spring can blind you. A 2023 Massachusetts Eye and Ear case series (Shah et al.) describes seven people whose eyeball was torn through (open globe injury) after a spring broke loose while they fixed a jammed door.
Final vision ranged from 20/125 to no light perception, and one eye was removed. No federal rule covers garage door repair.
What did we find?
A published case series on this exists, and it is hard reading. Shah and colleagues at Massachusetts Eye and Ear describe seven patients with open globe injuries (OGI) caused when a garage door spring came loose at high speed. Every one was “attempting to fix a jammed garage door”.
The paper concludes that “OGI appears to be a risk of attempting to fix a garage door in people who are inexperienced in doing so.”
The outcomes were severe. Final vision ranged from 20/125 to no light perception. One patient had the eye surgically removed (enucleation) five months after he tried to fix his garage door.
Compare that with what the law covers. Federal law has governed garage door openers in detail since 1991, and every provision is about the door operating. No provision anywhere covers the door being repaired.
We cannot tell you how often this happens. Seven patients at one hospital show that it happens and how, not how often. The federal injury database (NEISS) blocked every request we made (HTTP 403). This page has no frequency estimate and no repair instructions.
Do not attempt spring or cable work yourself
One safety instruction and a few limits on what this page can say. The safety instruction comes first.
Seven people at one hospital lost most or all of the sight in one eye doing exactly that. The counterbalance is the springs, cables and drums that hold the door’s weight. This page has no repair instructions and never will. If a spring has failed, stop using the door and call a professional.
The door is carrying its full weight with nothing balancing it. Do not run the opener. Do not lift it to get the car out. Keep people out from under it.
A case series from one hospital shows that something happens and how. It cannot tell you how often. This page has no frequency estimate.
NEISS is the national injury surveillance system run by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). cpsc.gov returned HTTP 403 to every request from our environment on the retrieval date, so the national picture is missing. The case series fills that gap in depth rather than in breadth.
The paper’s introduction says “[a]round 35,000 people get injured due to garage doors each year”, citing its own reference 2, which we did not verify. We do not repeat that figure as fact. Its presence in peer-reviewed work shows how far circulating garage door statistics travel.
It looked back at records from one hospital, with no control group and no denominator (no count of how many people tried the repair). It came from a chart review under IRB protocol #2022P001017. It is strong evidence the injury is real and severe, and weak evidence about anything else.
Why does the law cover the door closing but not the repair?
Because the law was written after children died under closing doors, through the 1970s and 1980s. We trace that history on our UL 325 timeline page.
Minnesota passed a law in April 1990, and Congress followed in November. The Commission published 16 CFR Part 1211 in December 1992. From January 1, 1993, every opener sold in the United States needed a second, independent way to detect an obstruction.
Those rules are specific. The opener must reverse on contact. Where it tracks door position, it “shall measure or monitor the position of the door at increments not greater than 1 inch”. The second device must both reverse a closing door and “prevent an operator from closing an open door”.
There must be a manual release whose handle “shall be colored red and shall be easily distinguishable from the rest of the operator”. It must adjust to six feet and release under at most fifty pounds of force. Since 2016, the software that decides to reverse must comply with UL 1998.
Every one of those rules is about the door doing its job. None is about the door being taken apart. The door is the most tightly regulated moving object in the house while it works, and the least regulated while it is being fixed.
HyreGarage analysis: no rule says who may work on a garage door counterbalance. No rule sets a method or the tools needed. No warning label about spring tension is required on the springs. And as our installer licensing study shows, most states have no license classification naming this trade.
A homeowner can buy a torsion spring online on a Saturday morning as easily as a light bulb.
This does not fault the 1990 law. It addressed a well-understood hazard to children and appears to have addressed it well. The hazard moved.
A closing door threatens whoever is under it, mostly children, and that got fixed. A spring under tension threatens whoever is working on it, mostly middle-aged adults. That has never been regulated at all.
What does the law regulate on a garage door, and what not?
We reviewed Public Law 101-608 § 203, the current text of 16 CFR Part 1211 and the building code rules on wind. The line falls in the same place every time.
| Aspect of the garage door | Regulated? | Where |
|---|---|---|
| The door closing on a person or object | Yes | 16 CFR 1211.7 — inherent primary entrapment protection, required since January 1, 1991 |
| Detecting an obstruction before contact | Yes | The secondary means required since January 1, 1993 — photo-eye, edge sensor or equivalent |
| Getting the door open in a power cut | Yes | 16 CFR 1211.9 — the red manual release, adjustable to six feet, releasing under at most 50 lb of force |
| Software in the entrapment protection device | Yes | UL 1998, added to Part 1211 by the 2016 amendment at 81 FR 20228 |
| Wind pressure and debris impact on the door | Yes | Building codes in wind-borne debris regions, via ANSI/DASMA 108 and 115 |
| Who may work on the counterbalance | No | Nothing federal. In most states, nothing at all — the trade is unlicensed almost everywhere |
| What tools or method a spring replacement requires | No | No regulation. DASMA publishes guidance to the trade; it binds nobody |
| Warning a homeowner before they attempt it | No | No labeling requirement addresses spring or cable work |
| Eye protection during a repair attempt | No | Nothing. Domestic repair is outside occupational safety rules entirely |
HyreGarage review, 2026-09-06. This covers federal product rules and building codes. Workplace safety rules apply to a technician working for an employer. They do not reach a homeowner working on their own house, which is where all seven patients in the case series were.
What happened to the seven patients?
As the paper reports them. “Zone” is the standard way doctors grade an open globe injury by how far back the wound goes. Zone III is the furthest back and has the worst outlook.
| Case | Age | Zone | On presentation | Final outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Case 1 | 37, male | I–II | Light perception | Hand motions at 7 months; eye soft, corneal graft opacified, patient declined further surgery |
| Case 2 | 59, female | I–II–III | Light perception | Light perception at 4 years; eye phthisical, graft hazy |
| Case 3 | 43, male | reported | Light perception | Reported in the series among outcomes of hand motions or worse |
| Case 4 | 57, male | III | Light perception, reverse RAPD | 20/125 at 2.5 years — the best outcome in the series |
| Case 5 | 43, male | I–II–III | Light perception, RAPD | Light perception at 1 month; eye soft, retina attached |
| Case 6 | 25, male | I–II–III | No light perception | No light perception at 3 months; eye phthisical |
| Case 7 | 60, male | I–II–III | Bare light perception | No light perception; enucleation for a blind painful eye at 5 months |
From Shah PP et al., Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina 2023;54(11):666–669, full text from PubMed Central, retrieved 2026-09-06. Our passage did not itemize case 3’s zone or final vision; the paper says all but one patient ended at hand motions or worse. Five of seven needed retinal detachment surgery.
How was the case series put together?
The authors did a retrospective chart review (a look back through patient records) under IRB protocol #2022P001017. They used the Research Patient Data Registry at Massachusetts General Hospital.
They searched “garage door” and “spring” together with open globe terms and ICD-9/ICD-10 codes, for patients seen before January 1, 2023. The seven patients they found were seen from 2008 to 2023.
They write that the mechanism “only came to our attention as a repeating mechanism of OGI after we saw five patients in the span of 3 years with the same injury (2019 – 2022)”.
Why can a garage door spring cause such bad injuries?
Because the spring stores a lot of energy, even when the door is still. The paper explains the physics briefly. It is worth restating, because most people’s instinct about garage doors is badly wrong.
A garage door can weigh up to four hundred pounds. The springs exist to hold that weight. So at any moment they store about the energy it takes to lift four hundred pounds through seven feet.
That energy does not go away when the door is closed or the power is off. It sits in wound steel, waiting.
As the paper puts it: “When garage doors close, energy is stored in a spring that is under compression due to the heavy weight of the door…”
It goes on: “The energy is released as the door opens, but if that energy is misdirected, it can cause minor injuries like bruises or abrasions, more severe injuries such as lacerations to the limbs or eyes or in some cases death.”
In these cases, a part left its mounting at speed. Case 2 was struck by “a spring-loaded one-foot metal plate”. Case 4 was struck by “a garage door spring attached to a metal bracket”. These are heavy objects moving fast.
The fractures across the series show it: a lateral orbital wall, the maxillary sinus, the orbital floor and medial wall, and a nasal bone. (The orbit is the bony eye socket.) That pattern is the signature of a heavy object hitting at short range.
HyreGarage analysis: this catches capable, handy people because a garage door does not look like it stores energy. It looks like a large, light panel on a track. The energy is invisible and seems unconnected to the part you are working on.
A closed door with the power off is more dangerous, not less, because a closed door means a fully loaded spring. Every instinct that makes an appliance safe to work on when it is switched off is exactly wrong here.
What other evidence points at repair, not operation?
The case series is the strongest evidence. Several other records point the same way.
The trade association warns installers, not users
DASMA Technical Data Sheet #190 on spring cycle life is written for the trade. Its safety warnings are about the person doing the work.
Dropping a spring “could also result in cracked or broken cast spring fittings, and this could cause possible spring failure and injury to the installer during installation”.
Winding a torsion spring backwards is “another potential safety issue for the installer”. Too much torque “could also be a safety issue for the installer applying such torque”.
The one recall caused by installation
There are four garage door and opener recalls in the whole CPSC database (see our full recall record). In 1997, Chamberlain recalled about 6,000 Sears Craftsman openers in Puerto Rico “that were not installed by a Sears authorized installer”.
The notice said “[i]f installed improperly, the garage door openers’ safety reversal system may not operate properly.” The defect was in the installation, not the product.
The rule itself covers only operation
Part 1211 is titled the Safety Standard for Automatic Residential Garage Door Operators. It regulates the opener. The counterbalance (springs, cables, drums and shaft) is not in it, and the counterbalance injured all seven patients.
Most places do not license the trade
We checked our own license records. Only two of the three states we hold records for have a classification naming this trade at all. Texas licenses elevator contractors and does not license construction contracting. Washington registers contractors with no trade exam and no doors specialty.
The parts are easy to buy
HyreGarage analysis: anyone can buy torsion springs, winding bars and cables online. No license, no training and no point-of-sale warning is required by anyone. The only safeguard in the chain is what the buyer happens to know.
What should you do when a garage door stops working?
Follow these steps in order. Step one removes most of the risk.
A loud bang, then a door that is suddenly very heavy, means the counterbalance has failed. So does a visible gap in a coil above the opening. You do not need to diagnose it further, and you should not try. Stop here and call someone.
Running an opener against an unbalanced door damages the opener and can pull the door off its track. Disconnect it with the red release handle. Leave the door in whatever position is safe, usually closed.
A door with a failed counterbalance is held only by what is left of the system. Treat the opening as a place not to stand.
Say what you heard, whether the door moves by hand with the opener disconnected, and whether you can see a gap in a spring. That is enough for a competent company to bring the right parts. Our spring repair guide explains the job.
“New springs” is not a specification. Ask for the cycle rating in writing (a cycle is one open and close). Ask whether the quote covers one spring or the pair. A pair fitted together has seen the same number of cycles.
The people in that case series were ordinary, capable adults doing what looked like a manageable job in their own garage. Most of them will not see properly out of that eye again. The tension does not care how handy you are.
What do the medical terms mean?
- Open globe injury (OGI)
- A wound that goes all the way through the eyeball: the eye has been ruptured or cut through. It is an eye emergency that needs surgery. The paper says all seven patients had repair surgery the same day or the next.
- Zone I, II, III
- The standard grading of an open globe injury by how far back the wound goes. Zone III is the furthest back and has the worst outlook. Six of the seven injuries in this series involved zone III.
- Light perception / no light perception
- The bottom of the vision scale. Light perception means the eye can tell light from dark and nothing more. No light perception means total blindness in that eye. Two patients in the series ended at no light perception.
- Enucleation
- Surgical removal of the eye. Done in case 7 five months after the injury “for blind painful eye”: an eye with no sight left that is causing pain, where removal is the remaining option.
- Phthisical (phthisis bulbi)
- An eye that has shrunk and stopped working after a severe injury. Recorded in two patients in the series at final follow-up.
- Retinal detachment
- The retina (the light-sensing layer) pulling away from the back of the eye. It needs major surgery: in these cases vitrectomy, retinectomy and silicone oil placement. Five of the seven patients developed one after the first repair.
What could we not find?
NEISS data. The national injury surveillance data would give the frequency and context this page is missing. cpsc.gov returned HTTP 403 to every request from our environment on the retrieval date. This page has no frequency estimate, and the seven cases should not be read as one.
A denominator. We do not know how many people try garage door repairs, so we cannot turn the case series into a rate. Seven patients over fifteen years at one hospital could mean a very rare event or a badly under-recognized one. The data cannot tell them apart.
Case 3 in full. The passage we retrieved describes case 3’s injury on arrival, but not its zone or final vision. We marked that cell rather than guess from the paper’s summary statement.
The “35,000 injuries a year” figure. The paper cites it in its introduction to its own reference 2. We did not chase that reference, and we do not repeat the number as fact.
We flag it because the same figure circulates widely with no known origin. Its appearance in a peer-reviewed introduction shows how such numbers gain authority by being cited rather than checked.
Whether this is getting better or worse. The authors noticed five cases in three years, 2019 to 2022, out of seven over the full fifteen-year window. That could be a real rise, better detection once the team looked, or chance. We will not call it a trend, and neither did they.
Questions
Is it dangerous to repair a garage door yourself?
Why are garage door springs so dangerous?
Does any law regulate garage door repair?
What injuries do garage door springs cause?
Who gets hurt repairing garage doors?
How many people are injured repairing garage doors each year?
What should I do if my garage door spring breaks?
Is it safer to work on a garage door with the power off?
Are most garage door injuries from the door closing on someone?
Where can I read the case series?
Written and audited by
HyreGarage Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are not a garage door company. We read the agency file, the code record, the standards document or the public register ourselves, compute the figure from it, and publish it with the source and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. Our own company records cover ten states; nothing national is ever derived from them.
- 10
- states our own company records cover — and the limit of any claim made from them
- 3,901
- garage door companies in the store
- 457
- license records verified against a state board
- 0
- national claims made from a ten-state store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Injury counts come from CPSC. Housing counts come from the Census file, not from a summary of it. Code history comes from the building commission that adopted the code. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we retrieve the source and do the arithmetic ourselves.
- Every figure carries its retrieval date. Registers change, datasets are revised and codes are amended. A number without the date it was read cannot be checked, so every study states one.
- Fact, calculation and analysis are labeled apart. A quote is a quote, a HyreGarage computation says so, and an interpretation says “HyreGarage analysis”. Presenting our reading of a dataset as something the agency stated would be the easiest way to lose the only thing this desk is for.
- Limitations go above the fold. If a figure is an upper bound, a bracket, or an association rather than a cause, that is said before the figure is quoted rather than in a footnote underneath it.
- No DIY instructions for spring, cable or track work. Those components hold enough stored energy to cause serious injury, and CPSC records the consequences. We describe what has failed and what a competent repair involves; we do not tell you how to do it.
Data as of Shah et al., Ophthalmic Surg Lasers Imaging Retina 2023, and CPSC, DASMA and CFR records, retrieved 2026-09-06. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold.
Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Spring gone?
Stop using the door and call a professional. Ask for the cycle rating in writing and whether the price covers one spring or the pair. Matching is still being built, so nothing goes to a company unless you agree.
Find a Garage Door Professional Open the spring life calculator
HyreGarage is not a garage door company and does not perform, supervise or warrant garage door work. This page reports published clinical research and is not medical advice. It contains no repair instructions of any kind, deliberately. Garage door springs and cables store enough energy to cause blindness and death; do not work on them.