Mind the rear axle.From the department of “solutions to things we didn’t know were problems,” Senator Dan Swecker’s office explains that a bill he introduced today, “An Act Relating to Amusement Rides”, aims at preventing people from getting scalped when they ride go-carts. Apparently (and gruesomely), go-cart scalpings are not uncommon, as riders’ hair tends to get caught in the spinning rear axle of the cart. “The results are catastrophic,” says Swicker, who became aware of the problem after a visit from a Lakewood woman who suffered such an accident. “There’s no way you can recover from that massive trauma to the head without significant disfigurement.”The bill mandates safety guards for mechanical moving parts and tightens up inspection and insurance provisions. “You may notice that the bill also applies to bungee jumping,” adds Swecker. “When my staff did research, they found that that’s another industry that has a problem with the same issue [of body parts getting caught in mechanical parts].”While he maintains that he can’t predict the bill’s chances, Swecker says that the reforms “are long overdue.”