kaiser@furilo.DEC (Systems Consultant) (03/04/86)
"Consumer Reports" for March 1986 contains an article evaluating child safety
gates. I'm not entering it here; the article merits your finding it and reading
it, however, which I encourage you to do.
However, the article has a sidebar ("Accordion gates: Clear and present danger")
which says:
Following an agreement with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the
manufacturers of child safety gates in January 1985 permanently halted
production of accordion gates like the one pictured here.
| |
|/\/\/\/\|
|\/\/\/\/|
|/\/\/\/\|
|\/\/\/\/|
Unfortunately, the agreement did not include a recall of the 10 to 15
million accordion gates still in use, or even of the smaller number
still available in many retail outlets. (A recent spot check in CU's
area found the potentially lethal gates available in 5 stores out of
10.)
The CPSC allowed those gates to remain in homes and stores in deference
to their manufacturers' balance sheets, even though its files show that
accordion "safety" gates have been responsible for more than 20 serious
accidents, including eight fatalities, to children between 9 and 30
months of age. We strongly recommend against buying a gate of this
type. If you already have one, replace it with one of the models tested
for this report. They present no danger of entrapment or strangulation.
---Pete
Kaiser%FURILO.DEC@decwrl.DEC.COM
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|ucbvax}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-furilo!kaiser
DEC, 2 Iron Way (MRO3-3/G20), Marlboro MA 01752 617-467-4445