Posted on 06/28/2011 8:33:47 AM PDT by Dr. Scarpetta
Beginning today, a new generation of cribs, designed to be safer, will be the only ones approved for sale — in stores, online, and even at neighborhood yard sales.
Ushering in one of the most significant changes in child safety in decades, the rule taking effect this week bans the manufacture, sale and resale of drop-side cribs.
Drop-sides have a side rail that can be raised and lowered to allow parents to more easily place or lift a baby, but they have been blamed in the deaths of several dozen children.
Another significant part of the new federal standard mandates more rigorous safety tests for children’s cribs before they hit the market.
Drop-side cribs have been around for decades. But they have increasingly come under scrutiny in recent years because of malfunctioning hardware, sometimes cheaper plastics or assembly problems that can lead to the drop-side rail partially detaching.
That can create a dangerous “V”-like gap with the mattress in which a baby can get caught and suffocate.
Drop-sides are blamed in the deaths of more than 30 infants and toddlers since 2000 and suspected in about a dozen other infant fatalities. Since 2007, more than 9 million drop-sides have been recalled including cribs from Evenflo and Pottery Barn Kids.
The end of drop-side cribs marks a long-awaited day for Susan Cirigliano, who lost her 6-month-old son, Bobby, when his drop-side slid off the tracks in 2004, trapping his head and neck between the mattress and the malfunctioning side rail.
He suffocated.
While drop-side cribs will no longer be made or sold, they are still being used in homes across the nation.
The industry says drop-sides that haven’t been recalled can be used safely as long as they are properly assembled and maintained to the manufacturer’s instructions.
(Excerpt) Read more at lehighvalleylive.com ...
IMHO probably most of them were from the crib not being put together right and fewer for failure of the latches which most likely the parents saw when they stuck but kept using them anyway. You are right this is too much especailly when most were cases because someone didn’t put the crib together the way i should’ve been.
Of the cribs that did fail, were they of flimsy design in the first place? The feature of being able to remove or drop a side was a great boon to mothers who would otherwise have to lift a wriggly infant over the side and into a conventional crib, or back out — how many injury accidents were avoided by the removable side? Instead of a dropping side, how about a side that swings outward and only then can be slid beneath the bed? (Oh, some stupid parent or baby sitter would try to lay the baby on the extended side, and the unit would tip over, and lawsuit city... you can’t outsmart stupid.)
“more than 30 infants and toddlers since 2000 “
Roughly THREE EACH YEAR!?!?!?!
For comparison:
“The National Weather Service publication Storm Data recorded a total of 449 deaths from lightning strikes between 1998 and 2008. According to the National Weather Service, lightning causes an average of 62 deaths and 300 injuries in the United States each year.”
http://www.infoplease.com/science/weather/lightning-deaths.html
Guess it is time we have a government mandate requiring us to all carry portable lightening rods...
Looks like a bunch of liberal crib-making want rules written against traditional crib-makers to help them break into the market.
Once everyone in the world had a working color television set the tv manufacturers realized the only way to keep the factories going was the mandate of all new radically different sets incompatible withthe old system.Money greased palms,and so it was put into law.
Right now they are doing the same with light bulbs.
The government and corporate interests don't allow the free market to work because the results might not feed the desired fascist future.
if any gubbermint spies show up at my yard sale that crib won’t be the only thing in my yard with a collapsed side...
I have a wonderful crib — it seems if you spend more money on them and don’t buy them at Wal-Mart, the rail works better.
The one I have has a bar that I can release with my foot, so that I can ever so gently put the baby in the crib without letting go with my hands, and it’s so quiet and smooth I can put the side up again. The cheaper cribs are impossible to latch, I discovered from experience.
Dropping the baby in wouldn’t work for me - they woke up every time.
Those lawn darts have lead tips!
Don’t let the EPA see them unless you want to end up in a FEMA re-education camp for the summer.
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