There is no excuse for manufacturers that let defective products reach the market.
Those are not my words. They are the subheading of an article, “Safety First?” in the September 2010 issue of Mechanical Engineering. I might change the headline to read “There are plenty of excuses but no good reasons for manufacturers that let defective products reach the market.”
The headline grabbed my attention because of the recent outright ban on drop-side cribs that came down after a unanimous vote of the board of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Although I was pleased with the ban, I was frustrated that it had taken so long — years and years after reports first came in about babies dying and suffering severe injuries after being strangled because of the failure of the movable parts of the side of the crib.
The author of the article, Peter R. Lewis, is a professor of forensic engineering at The Open University in Milton Keynes, England. Although he doesn’t mention recalls of drop side cribs in his article, he does mention other product failures that have gotten widespread press coverage, the most recent of which were the Deepwater Horizon oil spill fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico and the Toyota accelerator problem last year.
Engineers have a responsibility to design safe and reliable products and to test the prototypes in realistic conditions. Often that responsibility is put in the back seat by decisions of corporate executives to cut corners and save money during the design and testing of products.
Mr. Lewis lists these problems with the manufacture of many of the products that have failed:
- Poor product design
- Failing to test products under realistic conditions
- Speeding through testing steps to get the product in use as soon as possible
- Ignoring early warning signs of failure of a product in use
Proper design and testing of products, early investigation of problems when they begin to appear and prompt action to remedy the defect or remove the product from the stream of commerce, will save countless lives and, in the end, be more cost effective for those corporations that cut corners in the first place in a misguided effort to improve their bottom lines.
Obviously, the current answer to the question posed in the subheading of the article is, unfortunately, “No”.
Drop-Side Cribs Banned
After several recalls over the past three years that have resulted in the recalls of 11 million drop-side cribs, the board of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously yesterday to outright ban the manufacture, sale, re-sale and distribution of drop-side cribs. It also announced requirements for stronger mattress support, crib hardware to be sturdier, and more rigorous safety tests for baby beds.
The ban also prohibits the use of drop-side cribs in hotels, motels and child-care facilities.
The new rules will not take effect for several months and there are still millions of dangerous drop-side cribs in use all over the country. If you have a drop-side crib, the CPSC recommends you test it to be sure it is assembled correctly and that its hardware is secure. Personally, I would go buy a new crib without drop sides. Your baby sleeps in that crib every day. You want to sleep soundly, too.
If your baby goes to a child-care facility, check the cribs in use there. Take your baby elsewhere if the facility has cribs that have been recalled or that are not secure.
If you leave your baby in a nursery at your place of worship, check the cribs.
If you travel and use a crib at a hotel or motel, check the crib.
A representative of the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association, which represents over 90% of the manufacturers of juvenile products, says that most of the drop-side cribs that have been assembled properly and that have not been recalled can be used safely.Notice he didn’t say all the cribs that were assembled properly and not recalled were safe.
It will be many months before these dangerous drop-side cribs are completely out of circulation. A recall — even a ban — does not mean they immediately, automatically disappear.
If your baby has been injured by a defective drop-side crib, you should speak to a lawyer who is experienced in handling defective products cases. Give me a call at 703-260-6070, or email me at Sandra@RohrstaffLaw.com. I can help you find the right lawyer.
CODE ADAM – Help Finding Your Lost Child
I remember as a child getting lost in a clothing store. I was scared; my mother was frantic. When my children were young, my daughter played a trick on me and hid among the clothes. I was frantic; she was playing a game.
Unfortunately, not all stories about children being lost in stores turn out so well.
Losing track of your child is one of the scariest things a parent can experience. You’re looking at a pair of jeans at JC Penneys, or in a bookstore looking at a book someone recommended to you, when all of a sudden you turn around and your child is no longer next to you. Children have a tendency to wander off, usually without realizing the seriousness of what they are doing. They could be just around the next rack of clothes, but by being anywhere other than by your side, they care you half to death. Why is this so frightening? The unfortunate answer is that some people have decided to take advantage of lone children that they encounter. While rare, these kidnappings do happen.
Have you ever been in a department store and heard “CODE ADAM” come over the loudspeaker and wondered what it was?
CODE ADAM was developed by John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted, as a way to help save children from being kidnapped as his son Adam had been. Most retail stores and other public establishments train their employees in the process and practice of Code Adam. When a store employee is told of a missing child, the employee is trained to ask three questions:
What is the age and sex of the child?
What is the child wearing?
What color shoes is the child wearing?
The information will be broadcast over the loudspeaker of the store informing customers and employees alike that a child is missing. Employees may block the exits while they search for a child matching the description. If the child is found, the announcement “Code Adam Canceled” will be broadcast. If the child is not found after ten minutes, the store manager will call the police.
This morning, I was in a national retail store. I saw the CODE ADAM sign on the door. Since there were several children in the store, and it was very busy with holiday shoppers, I was glad that the employees had been trained in a system to help locate missing children. I hope they never have to use it.
Here is a partial list of department stores, retail shops, shopping malls, supermarkets, amusement parks, museums and others who participate in the Code Adam program.
Schools With Bullying Could Face Responsibility Under Federal Anti-Discrimination
When the Federal Government steps in, you know it’s serious and widespread.
In October, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights sent a letter to schools about bullying. The schools were told that some incidents of bullying may involve more than just violations of their own codes of conduct, including anti-bullying policies, and that they may not be doing enough if their own policies are all that they are enforcing.
The Virginia Department of Education followed up with alerts to schools that some student misconduct that violates anti-bullying policies could also trigger responsibilities under Federal anti-discrimination statutes.
Virginia requires local schools to have programs dealing with the inappropriateness of bullying, intimidation, taunting, name-calling and the more recent cyber-bullying.
According to data from the Virginia Department of Education, bullying and harassment accounted for 4.21 percent of the incidents of discipline for the 2008-09 school year. While that percentage may not sound like much, some of the cases have resulted in tragic consequences, including teens committing suicide after being subjected to ongoing taunting.
Read the full article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch here.
Bully-Free Virginia has worked with more than 100 schools in Virginia during the past ten years on setting up the Olewus Bully Prevention Program. Information about the organization and its Olewus Bully Prevention Program is at the Bully-Free Virginia website.
If your child has been the victim of bullying of any kind at school, contact a child injury lawyer for advice about what actions you can take on behalf of your child.
Boys, Brain Injuries and Football
Football is not a safe sport. If it were, athletes wouldn’t have to wear so much protective gear — including helmets to protect against brain injury from the violent contact inherent in the game. Not only is it dangerous at the professional level, it’s dangerous for our sons who play in elementary, junior high and high school.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not anti-football. I grew up in South Texas, my father was a high school football coach. In Texas, a high school football coach is more prestigious than the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and there’s a football team in every town and every city school, and the whole community comes out to the games. All three of my brothers played in high school or beyond. My son has been an avid fan since he was very young. However, as a mother, I was glad that he decided not to make football his sport.
Broken bones are one thing, but brain injuries are of a totally different magnitude. Brain injuries, especially in children and teens whose brains have not yet fully developed, can have devastating, life-long effects.
Football gear is being improved all the time, but we have yet to make football safe. (Some might say that improvements in the safety gear have actually encouraged a more violent game, but that’s for another blog posting.) Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is using THUMS (Total Human Model for Safety) software that Toyota developed to study the causes of injury in car crashes. THUMS is a virtual model of the human body that goes beyond traditional crash test dummies to include internal structures like organs, bones, ligaments, tendons and muscle. Researchers hope to be able to see how car crashes (and football hits) affect human tissue.
Wake Forest researchers are using THUMS to better understand how to treat injured players and are also working to find ways to make football helmets safer.
I hope Wake Forest, Toyota and others find ways to make football safer for our children. In the meantime, be sure your son’s football coaches and school administrators provide the best helmets available, that they know how to fit and maintain them, and that they do not let boys play without the most important piece of safety equipment there is. Your son’s brain is worth it.
If you suspect your son’s school has not provided safe equipment for your son, contact a child injury lawyer who can help you evaluate whether someone’s carelessness put him in a dangerous situation.
Is Your Child Being Pressured to Sext?
I have posted a couple of blogs here, here and here about textual harassment. But, parents, have you heard about SEXTING? If not, ask your teenager. Heck, ask your ten or twelve year old.
Sexting is sending nude or semi-nude pictures of yourself to your friends. It is a problem on so many levels.
1. A teen may send a picture to a friend but can’t control who that friend sends the picture to, or who that person sends it to — and on and on.
2. The more mature person the young teen grows into may have some explaining to do when s/he applies for a job or security clearance, which would be a problem because it’s embarrassing. But it could also be a problem because . . .
3. It’s illegal. Virginia law currently defines child pornography as possessing such pictures of minors, so if your child has such a picture on his/her phone, he could be charged with felony child pornography! Although many prosecutors are not charging felony child pornography but are charging misdemeanor obscenity, the fact remains that children could face some sort of criminal penalty for having these pictures.
4. Teens are feeling pressured into giving girl/boyfriends nude and semi-nude pictures — which means it’s just another form of controlling and bullying.
5. Sexting can be dangerous. Your teen never really knows who they are dealing with on the other end of the sexting.
Our website has an article in its Library, EXCUSES, EXCUSES, that is the transcript of a radio spot produced by the Ad Council. It’s a list of excuses a teen can use when she (or he) is being pressured into sexting.
Here’s a link to a website with tips to prevent sexting. Read it with your child — even if s/he doesn’t want to.
Keep on Reading
Fourteen months ago, I posted a blog about reading and its benefits to both the reader and the “listener” along with a photograph of a grandfather reading to his 9-month-old grandson.
The photograph here is of the same grandfather and grandson, now 23 months old, sitting on the same sofa, both still enjoying each other’s company, both still laughing and playing and learning that reading is, indeed, fun.
It looks like neither the grownup nor the child is paying attention to the book, but you can be sure there is plenty of learning going on.
I wonder if the child has discovered the magic of looking up his grandfather’s nose!
Daycare Video Shows Employee Scrubbing Child With Abrasive Sponge
Does your child’s daycare center have a webcam? Can you access it during the day? Many daycare centers give parents video access throughout the day so they can check on their child’s experiences during the day.
Imagine the surprise Mr. and Mrs. Locasio would have had if they had checked on their son one day in April at the Angels of Tomorrow Child Development Center in Simpson, North Carolina. They might have seen one of the center employees scrubbing their son’s face with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. See the video clip here.
The center’s story is that the employee had to hold the child down to scrub his face so he would be presentable when the parents picked him up. He was not. His face had several abrasions from the scrubbing. His parents would have preferred that the employee left the marker on his face and arm instead of causing the abrasions from scrubbing his face with the Magic Eraser.
The parents were called on the day of the incident and informed that their son had marked his body; however, they were not told that one of its employees had tried to scrub the marks off with an abrasive sponge. The employee has been fired, too late for the Locasio’s son, and faces charges of child abuse.
Angels of Tomorrow is committed to the safety of children in its care. It’s handbook states that it supports the philosophy of “utmost protection” of children in “all” suspected cases of child abuse or neglect and that it adopts procedures for reporting such incidents. The parents only recently saw the video, because Angels of Tomorrow would not allow them to see the video until after they hired a child injury lawyer. Evidently, their procedures do not include full disclosure to the child’s parents when an employee injures their child.
If your child shows any signs of injury after coming home from her daycare center, do whatever you have to do to get access to all incident reports, videos and whatever else the facility may have that is evidence of what happened. Contact a child injury lawyer who can investigate where abuse has occurred at a daycare facility.
Sandra Rohrstaff is experienced in representing children who have been injured. She can be reached at 703-260-6070, by email at Sandra@RohrstaffLaw.com, or through the firm’s website, www.RohrstaffLaw.com.
What’s going on near your child’s daycare? Any wild cougars running around?
When I started writing this blog about child injuries several months ago, I never thought I’d write a post about cougar safety or, rather, safety from cougars.
My sister-in-law told me that her two-year-old grandson’s daycare is near a wild animal orphanage. A wild adult male cougar escaped the other day and was on the loose for most of the day. Five schools in the vicinity were shut down. Police armed with high-powered rifles were scouring the area.
It attacked a dog in its own backyard. (The dog’s female owner kicked the cougar and it ran away. I forgot to mention this was in Texas. People are loyal to their pets and evidently unafraid of cougars.) The cougar also dragged a puppy off the deck of a house and into a nearby ravine, where the cougar was sedated and captured.
Small children playing outdoors probably look as appetizing to a cougar as do dogs and puppies.
Before I heard this story, it never occurred to me to check out whether there might be a wild animal orphanage near a daycare facility. Would it have occurred to you? And, now I have other questions. Orphanage? Wild animals? Who makes sure the fences are secure? How big is the space where the animals are? How many cougars do they have? Tigers? Lions? Does the State inspect the premises??? What kind of business license is for a business that houses cougars?
The lesson, though, is serious. You ought to know what kinds of businesses are near your child’s day care facility, even if your child is cared for in someone’s home. Check them out.
Yikes.
How Would You Know If Your Child Were A Victim of Textual Harassment?
Kids don’t stop needing protection once they’ve grown to be almost as tall as we are. In fact, teens may need more tools with which to protect themselves than younger children.
I have posted before about textual harassment here and here. Harassment has been around as long as there have been people. However, the new electronic devices have enabled bullies to take their tactics to greater levels of intensity.
Textual harassment is especially scary for teens because it is done through a medium — text messaging — that lots of parents don’t use or understand. That secrecy is an extra-added advantage for the bully and an extra-scary fact for our teens.
The Ad Council has done a good job of opening the door, even a little, onto the dark side of textual harassment. Here’s a link to one of their ads. Here’s another link to a different ad. For something really eye opening, be sure to read the comments below the TV spot that were written by teens!
The ads are part of the Ad Council’s Teen Dating Violence Prevention campaign. See its ThatsNotCool website here.
I’ve watched the ads several times, and they frankly scare me every time I watch them. Watch them with your teen. Watch them with your teen and some of his/her friends.
Learn about Twitter and get your teen to tweet about them. Bribe him or her to post on Facebook about textual harassment. (Yes, I said BRIBE.) Help teens get this out in the open. Do whatever you can to give your teen tools s/he can use to keep safe — even if it means s/he thinks you’re a dweeb.
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