I stand by saying having the machine powered near kids is already game over. They should maybe add a child-safe mode that requires an additional pin to activate, guards are a red herring here
The treadmills at a nearby gym have a cord you clip to your chest. If you go off the back of the mill, it tugs on the cord and triggers the dead-man-switch.
Of course, I've never seen anyone attach the cord.
It has one, I have a Tread and it's referred to as the "key" and has the same type of clip.
Kids of course don't know to use an emergency stop which is why I'm going on and on about maybe not being negligent parents and leaving kids near a piece of power equipment that causes 20k+ injuries a year...
I have a Peloton Tread so I'm talking about something I own? I even mention shopping for one in another comment
What kind of garbage comment is this anyways? I have one "top level" comment on this thread, and every other comment is replying to someone who replied to me. As if I'm the first person on HN to reply to people who replied to them.
So much for "assume positive intent" right?
-
If you think guards mean you can leave your kids near a piece of exercise equipment capable of injuring a person 100 different ways be my guest.
If I seem passionate about it's because of the utter absurdity! If someone left kids playing with a chainsaw and they got hurt you'd lock up the parents....
But somehow sticking a just as powerful motor on a abrasive belt driven device you literally stand on doesn't ring any alarm bells? Chainsaws and treadmills cause the same order of magnitude of injuries a year.
It's a piece of dangerous power equipment. You're being negligent to let kids play near it. End of story.
It could be a far less dangerous power equipment, and should be.
The difference?
Far fewer people who make mistakes will end up with severe consequences.
Had that been done, this story would likely not be a discussion.
The fact that it is a discussion is why product safety is a thing. And it will prove to be smart business too. The fallout from this will be extremely likely to exceed the cost of more safe engineering.
Doing that engineering is cheap insurance for everyone.
Too many stories like this will eventually result in that engineering being a requirement too.
Nobody is defending the parents. I won't.
But, the high price paid did not have to happen too.
Producing products carries a responsibility to the general public. It is cheaper for the enterprise to say, "fuck 'em, they better watch out."
Stories like this actualize those external costs, and justify regulation to insure those external costs are not out of hand too.
Fact is anyone shipping power like this into homes knows stuff happens to even the best parents.
Part of making the money involves doing the work to minimize danger. And it has to be that way, or the carnage would be unacceptable.
These people short cut all that and now have a nice shiny bit of gore to their name.
Next time, do the work, because people are not perfect and sometimes shit happens.
Even better?
Had they done the work, they would be in a strong position to talk about safety around their gear, but they did not care, leaving them in a very poor, "who are you to talk?" position, deservedly so.
There is just so much vaguery here that's all based on a false premise.
A machine that can accelerate your adult weight up 12 MPH. And has a grippy surface for you to run on it. Will ALWAYS be too dangerous to EVER leave your kids near it and you are NEGLIGENT if you allow them to be near it.
I never said it can't be safer, but it can not, by it's very intended purpose ever be safe enough to let kids be near it
This feels like kids found a loaded gun and instead of talking about how to deny access to the gun we can make the gun safer. Sure you can make it safer, but the root issue is the access because it is a naturally dangerous object.
It's as simple as that. We can spitball all the imaginary mitigations until the thing has a 3 x 3 exposed square for your feet and it will still be too dangerous for kids to be near.
All true, and that same machine should be produced safely, because the danger is known and how to mitigate it is also known.
They either were incompetent or did not give a fuck, neither is acceptable.
Secondly, because these are known dangers and mitigation are known, out there, expected, ordinary people may actually see more danger because generally set expectations do not match reality.
The reality being this machine is a bigger risk than may be expected, and it does not have to be. Should not be.
They can afford for it not to be too.
Any competent product safety people would have required the basics, which would take this story off the table.
This company does not have those people, and they should.
A loaded gun is inherently dangerous. Making it more safe, denying access, education all make sense, and the more of those things we do the better off we all are in the form of reduced cost and risk exposure.
Fact is guns are designed to kill things. We can only do so much, right?
Now, the inherent danger on a treadmill is different from a gun. Fact is treadmills are not designed to kill things.
That difference matters.
It can be made such that it rejects the danger condition mechanically, while still performing the task in a reasonable, cost effective way.
Fans are similar things. They are not designed to cut things or kill, but they can do that, unless designed to not do that.
Open, metal blade fans look cool, and are quiet, but people can get fingers into them easily.
Fans with fine screens on them reject the fingers, but pass the air. Fans with plastic blades improve things more. Bladeless fans, or flexible blade fans more still, though one can argue they perform a lot worse and may not always make sense.
All of these are primary, passive safety, engineered in to be a basic part of the device in question.
Doing that is the most robust kind of safety too.
No software, just physics applied to minimize harm. Always on.
For a treadmill, guards and paying attention to basic dimensions are primary safety, always on features.
Passive safety is best coupled with education, and it can all be enhanced further with software too.
Say we made a fan with software and sensors that can act quickly enough to stop the fan should people get fingers in the blades.
What happens when the sensor fails, or the software glitches?
Those are secondary safety concerns. Good to have, but not as good as primary safety is. Not always on.
You are talking about education as a safety measure. And you are not wrong to do so.
Others here, myself included, are talking about basic, primary safety, always on.
Education is not always on. Software and other active safety features are not always on.
Guards and basic dimensions being such that the machine rejects things it could do serious harm to are always on.
None of this is imaginary. None of it is trivial either.
It all adds up, and shipping a ton of these machines lacking basic, primary safety features increases the harm in the world, and for what?
A bit more margin, or other minor considerations.
Remember it all adds up.
Take a decade and a well designed machine with robust safety features and this one, and this one will injure or kill more people than the other one will.
That harm will happen because mistakes happen.
We can't undo dead and maimed people either. Talking about blame and shame, shoulda, coulda, woulda still leaves us with unrecoverable harm that was unnecessary.
Harsh world you want to live in!
Better hope you are not tired, or uninformed because in your world nobody gives a fuck whether you and yours live or die, or get hurt.
In the one product safety people work to make reality, people do give a fuck, and consider talking about close calls and minor injuries, when it all could and would have been so much worse, a very nice problem to have.
So, here is how that will all go:
On an A / B test, the safer world wins by a mile.
In that world we admonish the parents, who still have a live kid, and we all carry on thankful what could be done, makes good sense to be done, WAS DONE.
In this world, we admonish the parents, express our condolences and lean hard on these clowns to either step up or get out of the game.
In yours... well? Good luck. I suppose we can tell the parents they can just make another kid.
We do exactly what you said, AND we continue to improve product safety so that we minimize the harm in all fronts.
Read it again. Everything you say about parents is valid, education done, the whole nine.
The difference is you want to make it all about the parents, despite the fact that this kind of thing could, and does happen to even the best parents.
Because NOBODY is perfect there is a responsibility to design with that in mind, and in this case with this product, this company, that did not happen and it should have, same as the parents should have...
We have standards for all this because when we subtract either error here we end up with a far better outcome.
And that is why there willbe far fewer events overall, and for those that do happen, far less harm.
This is no contest, unless you somehow believe it makes more sense for people making products to not give a fuck about what happens to the people who use them.
We did that already and it was terrible. That movie already played out and the world moved on.
Back in the 20's it worked much more like you advocate here. The verdict was clear and does not favor the position you have advocated for here.
I stand by saying having the machine powered near kids is already game over. They should maybe add a child-safe mode that requires an additional pin to activate, guards are a red herring here