Regulators urge safety recall of Peloton treadmill after child dies
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Edit: confirmed (warning: video shows a child being injured): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y
But this actually makes sense.
A child or pet gets in there it really is game over. I can imagine even if an adult somehow slips up that it would be insanely painful and difficult to free yourself -- especially at a running pace.
This isn't the same as recalling a car by having owners drive them to the nearest dealership for a modification/repair.
They are advising customers to keep the safety key out of the device to prevent kids from using it. ...and I think that makes sense.
A design change is already made on their newer models, but this sort of issue exists with any treadmill, which is why they all have safety keys.
In industry, this is called an unguarded pinch point. Classic cause of injuries and amputations. It's an OSHA violation in an industrial operation.
Every other treadmill I've ever seen had substantial guarding around the pinch points.
OSHA: "1910.211(d)(44): 'Pinch point' means any point other than the point of operation at which it is possible for a part of the body to be caught between the moving parts of a press or auxiliary equipment, or between moving and stationary parts of a press or auxiliary equipment or between the material and moving part or parts of the press or auxiliary equipment."
[1] https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1e...
Thousands of non functional products can ruin the company while this event could be explained with “Don’t allow children around running and dangerous equipment.” You wouldn’t allow small children around a running lawn mower or car and a treadmill requires the same level of respect.
The peloton in the video has no protection to prevent dragging something underneath it, and just kept going as it dragged the kid under it. The motor stalled, locking the kid, then started dragging again as soon as the kid managed to almost get free.
None of this excuses Peloton. This is a uniquely dangerous treadmill due to its large diameter rollers and deck height.
All it needs is a guard under the deck and a better safety key mechanism.
Remember that on a treadmill you are running in place. You don't actually have any forward momentum, so you don't have to worry about slamming into the console at 8 mph. It's not like if you were running outdoors and someone suddenly put an obstacle a few feet in front of you.
You should just have maybe a little stumble, at most requiring that you use the rails to steady yourself.
Here's a video of someone running when power was cut to their gym [1]. The power goes out at 1:07.
It's probably worth actually testing this at various speeds working up to your normal maximum speed. I've done that (although I just do fast walks, not running) because one of the reasons I might be on the treadmill instead of outside is bad weather, which is sometimes accompanied by power failures, and I wanted to know if I should avoid the treadmill during those times.
The deaths will probably have been from crushing.
Here the force is the weight of the peloton unit, rather than the motor pulling you into a fixed width gap.
Shitty diagram to show what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/TstPxtb
The belt on the peloton doesn’t go inside the device, it runs fully on the outside all the way around and underneath.
Additionally, a sensor on the motor could detect a sudden increase in power required to keep the belt spinning at a particular speed (such as something getting under it). This would trigger an emergency stop and possibly an audible alarm.
Whether or not it is a terrible design, it's common.
My guess is that the Peloton design is more dangerous due to the treads, the thickness overall and how to high it sits off the ground. Perfect design for sucking things under.
It’s poor software.
Example: Old coworker mentioned working on a controller for an airbag. She said the watchdog timeout was set to a shorter period than required to fire the airbag. So if the firmware went off into the weeds the watchdog would fire before the air bag.
My proform doesn't have one? though i always wear the emergency clip on treadmills. cheaper treadmills though motors are super slow to ramp up and down. [2]
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0027/4490/9879/products/TR...
https://res.cloudinary.com/iconfitness/image/upload/f_auto,q...
I always wear the clip i've fallen off a treadmill before didn't get great balance on the hand rails stepping off a sprint.
But...the guards are usually on the bottom, maybe an inch or two from the edge. For anyone standing or sitting near the treadmill they either won't be visible or will only be a little visible--and in the latter case you can still make them hard to spot by making them the same color as the belt.
Only people who lying down on the floor or who are standing or sitting far away in a big room should see them (and again, coloring them the same as the belt can make them harder to notice).
Unless I'm misunderstanding the geometry (I've never seen a Peloton treadmill in person), I don't see how wanting a clean look would lead them to leave off guards.
This thing needs to be banned first, company investigate second. Bet there are email trails from angry engineers telling exactly what most of us say here. The excuse that only few people get killed so its all kumbayah is the most despicable thing a CEO can say. He needs to resign immediately.
My hunch is that the slat based system doesn't allow for guards like most treadmills
First result I got for a slat based treadmill other than the Tread has the same problem: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2559/4942/products/trueform...
To me the thing that makes my heart drop instantly is seeing two small children messing with a treadmill.
An easily deadly combination regardless of guards, to me this is on the same level as leaving kids with heavy machinery.
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
Of course, I've never seen anyone attach the cord.
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...
But apparently that's a radical take for HN
Perhaps someone that has used one and can comment on it. I’ve been thinking of replacing my current treadmill with one of these. I don’t have small children or pets, but I’d like to get a safe treadmill if I’m going to buy new one.
There are many models of slatted treadmills and in my shopping I haven't seen one with a guard
It could be a coincidence, a lot of treadmills period don't have guards, but really I think the answer here is maybe making sure kids can't activate it
I was expecting the child standing on it to be the one hurt since at full tilt those could easily catapult a child with deadly force..
That doesn't help if a kid or pet are caught in there while the adult is on the treadmill, especially at higher speeds or when reaction time is slowed due to wearing headphones.
The answer is to install protection. Having slats instead of the classic band doesn't make it impossible to protect that pinch point, rather just makes the machine bulkier (longer) and less aesthetically pleasing. There are plenty of mechanisms and sensors that can detect something being caught in there and immediately stop operation but they cost more.
See the video above, with the small child being slowly pulled under the treadmill. The machine not being able to detect *it lifted off the ground repeatedly while operating" in order to come to a full stop immediately is the kind of thing that happens when half-assed engineers meet half-assed managers, thinking they can make a "full-assed" product.
Why are you acting like this is a binary choice instead of a case where multiple mitigations can try and help make a bad situation slightly less worse?
There are multiple stories of children dying on treadmills without ever leaving the top surface of them. Mike Tyson's daughter died after getting caught in a rope hanging near the machine.
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At the end of the day with you on it or not, if your kids are near the running machine, it's already a dangerous situation and the most important mitigation called "parental supervision" has failed. No other mitigation will change that.
I wonder how long until I get the requisite "have you seen how easily kids escape supervision!" I sure have, and that's why having a system only an adult can activate goes a long way.
I'm a fully grown man with one and I'm certain if I were to put just a single foot on it at full tilt I'd violently injure myself. I can't even imagine what it'd do to a child. A guard wouldn't change that
> that's why having a system only an adult can activate goes a long way.
And I'll just say it again so it's very clear: it doesn't go nearly far enough.
But I want to see a guard behind and under the treadmill so it can't grip and drag anything under it. I want to see sensors that detect when something was grabbed by the belt past a certain point, detect the (sudden) change in drag, detect the inclination of the treadmill, detect and only operate when someone is on the treadmill so that putting "just a single foot on it at full tilt" is simply not possible. When the failsafe is triggered it should cause an immediate but relatively gentle stop and maybe even slowly reverse the direction of the belt for a short time to release whatever was caught.
My cheapo gardening tools make sure they only operate when both my hands are tightly gripping the handles, they detect when something is wrapped around the spinning parts and stop to prevent damage, some even detect if you hold them at the wrong angle and cut power.
The are plenty of engineering solutions to to cover 99.9% of accidental and maybe even intentional misuses. But they cost $10 more and don't look that nice. So killing or injuring a child as a cost of doing business is preferred.
"The answer is to install protection."
Sure sounds like you're saying "the answer" is install protection.
When there is no "the answer" other than "kids and abrasive belts moving at 6 miles an hour don't mix"
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Thats is why I said this is about negligent parents because it is! That child on the top of the treadmill could have easily grasped the nice tactile looking knob on the side of the machine.
They would have been instantly catapulted off the machine at full speed and no guard would have helped.
These machines will launch a grown man off them at just 5 mph, at 8mph he's being chucked clear across into whatever happens to be at the other side of the machine: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/great-scott-dad-rides-laundr... -
Like a Tread has a safety key clipped to you, your "reaction time" would literally be turning your body.
But even that is a red herring: if you're letting your kids near the machine while you're using it and unable to react to them even getting near you, let alone on it, again you're being negligent and no mitigation will change that.
That's not saying there should be no safety features before someone starts misconstruing this comment to say that...but the machine by it's nature exposes its most dangerous surface. It's like if your cheap gardening tool required holding it by the blade to use it, the treadmill belt has to be exposed in large swaths for the thing to work and presents an immediate danger to children.
Like seriously, think of a treadmill as a chainsaw you run on because it's not that far off in terms of power or how many people get hurt by them every single year.
Again treadmills injured over 20 thousand people in one year. 20 thiusand ER visits... if it was as easy to make a treadmill "99.9% safe" as you're handwaving it away to be with grandiose psuedo-political pandering... I'm sure someone would have thought of it.
> When there is no "the answer" other than "kids and abrasive belts moving at 6 miles an hour don't mix"
Kids don't mix with a lot of things that still fill our houses because we designed them to be as safe as they reasonably can. Even your lowly power outlet isn't just 2 hanging wires with a warning post-it because someone smart enough thought it'd be a bad idea to expect humans to not make mistakes. The live wire buried in the wall, holes covered with plastic, fuses or GFCI/RCBO, etc. to keep you safe. Most of your belongings are designed to enforce some safety measures. But a treadmill operating by itself and dancing around the floor while sucking in a child is OK because the parent should have been there?? That's a bad product and an indefensible position.
Engineering for consumer devices has to be done with safety in mind and compensating for the mistakes that the customers will inevitably make. I'll leave this here:
> "It is believed that at least one incident occurred while a parent was running on the treadmill, suggesting that the hazard cannot be avoided simply by locking the device when not in use," the CPSC said.
So with your answer being categorically classified as "not the answer", the big part of the real answer is to install many protections that Peloton and others skimped on. Some of them I listed and would have prevented anyone from being thrown off, or sucked under of the treadmill unless they were going out of their way to achieve this.
> if it was as easy to make a treadmill "99.9% safe" as you're handwaving it away
It is easy to make them safer than they are now. Manufacturers just choose not to because it's cheaper that way, because regulation doesn't force their hand, and because the occasional injury or death is the cost of doing business. And I say this as someone who saw every step of this, from designing and building (up to and including medical devices to give you an idea of my upper limit for safety and caution), to setting the company strategy, in a time when there was no "move fast and break things, we'll just send an OTA to fix it".
You had multiple opportunities to understand the point I'm making very clearly but chose to focus on covering your weak position. That's too bad.
"It's a very small piece" when it literally would have prevented the exact incident linked in this thread that ended up with a child already abrading their face on the top surface before ending up under it.
You can't understand the basic details of the situation so your comments are not worth my time
> "It is believed that at least one incident occurred while a parent was running on the treadmill, suggesting that the hazard cannot be avoided simply by locking the device when not in use," the CPSC said.
A child lock or quick reaction are not enough despite your insistence. Any kind of engineering background, or maybe just common sense, would tell you this. You even accidentally figured it out by noting that a treadmill could hurt an adult if they stepped on it at full tilt. This machine and many others have none of the safety mechanisms and failsafes that needed to make them safe enough to use in a home. They're just made to look pretty and save a buck, so they will kill or injure adults, children, or pets just the same.
Omitting essential safety measures and replacing them with a disclaimer is the hallmark of incompetent engineers. Like replacing the protection in a bathroom outlet with a disclaimer "don't use around water".
I tried taking the best possible interpretation but your comments don't show evidence that you have anything really pertinent to say on the topic, just opinions and guesses that don't stand up to reality. Might be worth it to take your time and understand what I'm saying and that way maybe you'll get something useful out of this conversation.
> > "It is believed that at least one incident occurred while a parent was running on the treadmill, suggesting that the hazard cannot be avoided simply by locking the device when not in use," the CPSC said.
It doesn't take long for a child or small pet to be pulled under and injured even when the adult is on the treadmill. From the video it looks like there's absolutely no mechanism to prevent this, or even detect that it's happening. The treadmill seems to be happily operating without any supervision of any kind, and is lacking even basic fail-safes that should kick in at least when it's lifting off the floor and hopping sideways while still pulling the child under.
When the government has to warn people to stop using your product if there are small children or pets at home you know you have bad engineering and bad management.
I thought young child and big machine was a no brainer
Seems like if a cheap space heater can have switched like this I don’t see why a 34 billion company can’t focus on this to come up with something truest innovative and safe.
Regarding the photo switch. My first thought was that dyson is now counting dust particles 15,000 times a second in a consumer grade battery powered vacuum these guys could do something equally innovative.
Is Peloton even innovating? It’s a treadmill with a big screen on the front.
I haven’t paid too much attention to their products but they always seemed just a fad.
I was expecting it to be a product demo video or something.
He was lucky.
This is a different incident than the one mentioned in the article though. In that incident, the child was "discovered trapped under the machine and not breathing" and was hospitalized with a brain injury.. In this video, the child does get out from under the machine and walks away. Although the only difference between the two incidents is probably the ending... this child could have also easily become trapped.
This is why people who miss WPD on reddit kind of worry me a little. I understand the philosophical side to the argument and all that but it's probably the only stuff online that really sets my caveman-alarm off.
Crazy to think that someone thought that was a good idea.
IMHO that video shows negligence on the part of the parents. There was a camera there but no physical presence. Exercise equipment is dangerous if not used correctly, and although I'm one who doesn't believe in "helicopter parenting", I certainly wouldn't let my kid play with a treadmill with only a camera watching.
https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/90%20SERIES_SERV...
However, compared to those treadmills, the Peloton Tread+ has much larger diameter rollers and step-up height. It's also much heavier (455 lbs vs 340 lbs). It looks uniquely dangerous to me among residential treadmills.
Landice L7 and L8:
https://cdn.sweatband.com/Landice_L9_Club_Pro_Sports_Trainer...
Peloton Tread+:
https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https:%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2...
The Landice can be a threat for a pet or can grab/scratch a foot. The Peloton clearly/visible is higher and a small child can sneak or can be pulled under it.
Most threadmills have it, and it is hard to imagine why a one wouldn't have it.
https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/Install%20TreadB...
(Aside, but I love that Landice puts their excellent technical documentation online.)
If they also serve a safety purpose, great. (My True has these too, but there's about 2-3" between the horizontal bar and the belt.)
The Peloton Tread+ must have the horizontal structural cross-members inside the belt. They'd have to make the side rails taller to accommodate a safety bar:
https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/articles/36003593355...
We have a Peloton Treadmill (now called the Tread+, but the original one is the same as the Tread+), in fact my wife is running on it right now.
If you do a Google Image Search for "treadmill", you will see most treadmills are belt-style, and often have a metal bar underneath the back, a few inches in. NOT a cover on the back -- the plastic cover is typically on the FRONT of most treadmills, which won't help with things getting sucked underneath at the back, which is where this would happen.
The Tread+ is a "slat style" treadmill similar to something really high end like a $10k+ Woodway, but other brands also sell slatted style treadmills.
It's definitely obvious how something can get sucked under the back of the tread, however I'm not sure how much better having a protective bar is; I really wouldn't want an arm to get sucked between the belt and a protective bar underneath, which is usually at least a few inches from the underside of the belt.
And of course the Tread+ is something like 450lbs; the heavier the treadmill, the more problematic something like this is likely to be.
Having it shut off when something goes under it does't really help; I'm not sure I'd want my kid to get crushed by a stationary treadmill either.
Like most treadmills, the Tread has a safety key which you're supposed to wear (but not everyone does, and of course kids playing on it are not going to). Actually, I just realized the obvious answer is, if you have kids, take the safety key off when you're not using it. But, mistakes happen, and of course something can also get sucked under when a properly trained adult is using the device as well. (One of our cats took a serious blow to the head from the swinging arm of our elliptical, but he was fine; cat.) I definitely wouldn't want anything going under the pedals of our Peloton bike either; metal pedal plus speed plus flywheel mass would be a REALLY bad time.
Back to the Tread, the belt stops if there's no weight on it for "a while" but I'm not sure how long; certainly it takes more than 10 seconds. And, again, you'd be left with a kid trapped under a STOPPED treadmill which is not much better.
There's no particular safety for turning it on. Typically I select my profile on the touchscreen but the knobs on the side to start the belt are active before starting a class. I think they might even be active when the tablet is "on" (tap the power button on the cross bar first) but before choosing a profile.
I suppose a workaround would be to require a login before turning it on, but of course this is a step most other treadmills don't have either.
At least with a stopped treadmill you’re not fighting with the treadmill the escape, and if the belt enters a free running mode when off, then it’ll make it easier to escape.
If you watch the video you can see the kid get trapped by the treadmill and completely stalls the belt. But rather than shutting downs, the treadmill just keeps trying to run forwards. There’s even a moment where the belt runs backwards for a second before it start running forwards again, re-trapping the kid.
That Peloton is even trying to defend itself is asinine. They need to pull this product ASAP.
It’s crazy to think the treadmill has the ability to detect a potentially dangerous situation (the belt is completely jammed). But instead of shutting down, it does everything it can to keep operating and doing as much damage as possible.
Peloton didn’t need to add extra guards or sensors, they just needed someone to program the damn thing to shutdown when it jams. Rather than programming it with some dangerous and stupid auto-unjam sequence.
This is a very naive comment. Substantial damage can be caused prior to the system detecting an error condition; this is no excuse for not having guards.
Look inside a car, and you can find a dozen software based systems designed to make the hardware safer. E.g. Traction control, body stability systems, ABS breaking, software that decides which airbags fire in a collision, lane departure computer vision systems, air pressure alerts, engine control systems that look for unsafe operating conditions etc etc
Ultimately software can be made safe. Long and rigorous software development processes and audit process are what makes it safe.
Ultimately there’s nothing inherently safer about hardware safety systems, they’re engineered and suffer from human error.
Proper risk assessments are always required, and safety systems should be built to match the risk. There’s no one size fits all’s. In Pelotons case, they clearly failed to assess and address the risk properly.
Every treadmill I’m familiar with has a safety key attached to a lanyard that the runner is supposed to attach to their waist band that immediacy pulls the key and deactivates the treadmill if the runner falls.
I don’t know how this treadmill is still operating after the older child gets off. Maybe the key was left in place and the treadmill left turned on but that’s really f’ing dangerous. A modern treadmill should reset itself after a period of non-use and require the key to be removed and re-inserted. That’s in addition to a physical safety guard under the belt this treadmill clearly should have (see my post elsewhere in this thread comparing the size of the Peloton to another premium residential brand).
This Peloton is a death machine. I didn’t realize the CSPC doesn’t have the regulatory authority to force a recall.
ETA: just learned yet another thing. It’s really hard to physically reach the switch to turn it off. The switch is located under the treadmill. Wtf. See the 8 minute mark of this video:
Definitely some changes Peloton can make though.
If the issue is the guard it's more than just peloton that then needs to revise their design.
What I do find more interesting is how the treadmill is still running even after the other kid gets off. There is a reason a lot treadmills have lanyard that shuts it off.
What a stupid design. They deserve to get sued into oblivion
The hubris...
The only correct response would have been something along the lines of "we have no comment at this time."
The job is to communicate that you are aware of an issue, that you are investigating, and/or that you are cooperating. If you want to lobby for favorable treatment from regulators, hire an external lobbying firm to do it quietly, don't get into a public flame war with the CPSC.
How are PR/spokespeople for high profile companies still making these kind of amateur hour mistakes in 2021? Isn't the public record absolutely littered with comments like these that just made the company look worse?
Also, the second they (themselves - Peloton) admit that "our product killed a kid and we knew of this risk, and we chose risk acceptance and when with it anyway - because you know.. profit margin" their company is dead. They got one chance, to prove that "everyone else is crazy, and please buy more Pelotons with pathetic ads".
They can take the high-road that has a 50-50 (?) chance to doom them, or make them the top responsible company. What we can do is stop buying their products, until they either make them safer, or see them go bust (and spend the extra $50-100-200 and buy safer products).
Another reminder that we need to make space for using ethics at work, and not just doing whatever the company thinks is best. A company as a legal person is basically a sociopath (if it were a person).
The PR machine is in full "there is no war in Ba Sing Se" mode.
Who says they haven't? I mean, isn't that the exact claim they're making when they say the CPSC has mischaracterized the situation? That they've investigated the issue and determined that the CPSC's stance is incorrect?
That's why you hire professional PR people, who a "spokesperson" presumably is. Their job is to be that cool cucumber when things go wrong.
Thirty years ago, "no comment" could buy you some time and you could present your case later in primetime (or whatever you could land) to lots of first-time impressions. In 2021, it's almost always a stupid thing to say from a PR standpoint (I'm sure some lawyers would still love it) because everything is always-on and there's almost no element of timing aside from burying stories on Friday.
Exactly. The only thing that's different now is it's a dangerous piece of equipment with a popular brand name. The people who are upset about this are going to be really upset when they find out treadmills have regularly been killing a few people a year for decades. And they're one of the less deadly pieces of workout equipment!
If they had said they were concerned about the issue, and investigating the matter I'd be happy to consider their brand again.
Getting into a public fight with the CPSC completely taints my view of their brand. Peloton is pretty much entirely crossed off my list of products I would consider because of their response.
I mean, they _did_ get their denial into my first read of the story, but they did it in a way that seems far more brand damaging than a noncommittal expression of concern.
Peloton is now, to me, the brand that doesn't really care if they kill children.
I'm just speaking as a brand consumer, and the tone of the response (public fight with CPSC vs statement of concern and a promise to investigate) speaks loudly to me about how much they care about the underlying issue.
Of course, the actions matter more to me in the long run. Regardless of what they say today, what they do over the next 6-18 weeks matters the most.
But as far as statements go, I feel like an expression of sympathy, concern, and a desire to investigate the issue would be better in my book.
This is such a horrible line of thought, but if their founders and investors don’t go actually personally financially and/or physically punished from being morally corrupt, that is only a good thing for the company!
Admitting responsibility in as litigatious an environment as the US is essentially throwing away money, with less public benefit than the malaria nets.
They may well end up facing an involuntary recall, which will make this PR strategy seem especially short sighted.
We have moved to a society where things are expected to be safe except for a number of well known exceptions, and this is good:
"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. " Alfred North Whitehead
As technologists it is our business to know and understand the consequences of the mechanisms we build. We value greater understanding and perception. But it is a mistake to project this value system onto society as a whole, since, as the quote shows, the worth of what we build is precisely to allow others to avoid this burden. That applies in safety as much as anything else. As technologists we can see that if a device has a 500W motor in it , it bears thinking about whether there are any safety issues. But consumers rightly expect any safety issues to be pointed out to them.
What worries me is when companies are run by people who don't understand that all our safety is the result of a lot of work, and so don't realise the amount of diligence required.
Peleton should redesign the treadmill. It is needlessly hazardous, and a few small changes could easily remedy the problem without compromising the envelope of functionality for the device.
But: I absolutely hate modern appliances with egregious safety buffers, as to reduce their functional envelope down to precisely what the designers imagined, and nothing more.
Also, and I realize this is an unpopular stance: Danger is important for children.
I'm not suggesting that we need to start giving kids industrial metal saws or machine guns as soon as they can walk, but we do need to stop hiding them from the world. Kids need to learn how to live their lives, and that means getting hurt and learning from it.
Our job as engineers is, within the above limits, to try and keep those lessons from being lethal, disfiguring, or crippling.
This is very, very true. I didn't use safety gates on my carpeted stairs when my kids were babies, and they learned to navigate stairs almost as soon as they could walk. I let them use scissors when they were really little too, and by the age of three they were expert little paper crafters.
That said, I sure as shit wouldn't let them play around a running treadmill, even if I was in the room.
Modern playground design is actually taking this into consideration by designing with manageable dangers (climbing up high ladders etc.) but removing things that are not obviously dangerous, like for example gaps where heads can get stuck
I disagree. All we're doing is creating a false sense of security, propped up by a government which is mostly incompetent and often abjectly corrupt when deciding what is "safe". For reference see the absolute littany of chemicals with which we have been poisoned for the last half-century, and the outragously scandalous conduct of our governemnt in failing to protect us from them.
When people know that there's no assurance that the things they put into their homes and give their children are "safe", and that they bear total responsibiltiy for outcomes, they tend to be a lot more careful. This is a good thing. We want thoughtful careful individuals making decisions and shaping markets. We want to encourage people to think more, not less. We want people who think to succeed, and poeple who don't to fail, and to bear full and total responsibility for their failures. Otherwise there is no progress.
No, it's not. I shouldn't have to check the piping of my gas heating system for leaks, or the wiring of my lights for shorts, or my car not to fall apart on the highway, or the food I bought to poison me. If I, and everyone else, had to do those things, I wouldn't have time to do anything else, so I wouldn't bother with those things and I'd live in a stone hut.
You could argue that safety standards aren't strict enough, or aren't enforced (yes, we should address that litany of chemicals!), but there's no question that safety standards significantly improve our collective quality of life.
P.S. Add "computer security" to that list of things I shouldn't need to care about.
This competition would bear out in your heating or electric company guaranteeing their installation and agreeing to be liable for any damages caused by faults in their product. Your car already has such guarantees and warranties, and they are the result of market pressure.
Computer security functions similarly - top companies would complete to provide guarantees of security by offering to cover losses that result from breaches. This already happens too. It's not as bleak as you make it out to be.
Also we would all be much healthier if we lived in stone huts.
That sound nice, but it doesn't work in reality. In reality, companies facing liability can, and often do, respond by simply dissolving, and the liability disappears. This is why I have a concrete tile roof that's falling off the house, with a worthless 30-year guarantee made by a company that no longer exists.
And yes, a failing concrete tile roof is as dangerous as it sounds.
This used to just be the way the world worked before we regulated it. I don't see what was wrong with it exactly.
Name one. There are many, many more that haven't. I don't know how to find a company that is guaranteed to be around in even 20 years to honor a warranty, and neither do you.
> The choices are there in the market - you can buy a service from an upstart with no reputation and take a risk (but usually save some cash) or you can buy from an established provider with a reputation and pay a premium.
It doesn't matter how "established" or "reputable" the company is. There is nothing naturally permanent about any company. Companies shut down all the time for perfectly legitimate and benign reasons, like when the owners retire. How many contractors do you think pass on their businesses to their kids? I'll give you a hint if you need it. And if a company is facing liability, or even the possibility of liability, there is nothing preventing them from shedding some or all of their liability in bankruptcy.
The company that installed my roof was big, established, and reputable. They installed concrete tile roofs on two dozen houses in our neighborhood. The owners retired over a decade ago, long before the problems with our roofs became evident.
There was no negligence or massive incompetence, no scam of any kind. The company just didn't install the battens correctly, which was very common in the 90's. Most concrete tile roofs were installed incorrectly back then, and there is now a rash of failing roofs around our state.
Nobody except the most naive outsider would rely on the promise of warrantees lasting decades to do anything to help this situation.
> This used to just be the way the world worked before we regulated it.
Citation please. Give me an historic "pre-regulation" example of what you're claiming.
This myth that somehow competition will sort things out really needs to disappear, it has been disproven again and again.
The actual comparison here is industrial lathes. And you are welcome to read what can happen with those when safety is lax.
https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...
The Fremen Mirage (named after Dune's Fremen) is the myth that harder conditions produce harder/tougher peoples. Dr. Deveraux goes into very extensive depth as to why this is a myth with a lot of historical evidence.
Though the series of articles is focused on war, I feel that the Fremen Mirage is also one that can be pointed toward safety culture as well.
Thank you very much for the Whitehead quote, I'll be saving that one.
Your comment here is making me re-evaluate that, specifically the Whitehead quote. I think we can strive for both, but I never realized I was biased one way or the other until it was pointed out this way. Thanks!
I hope their reasoning isn't that a child shouldn't have used it. Kids love video games. They need to figure out how to minimize the risk in addition to doing all they can to prevent kids from using it.
If, in actual use, some people are leaving the key in the treadmill, then just having the key and two sentences in the manual isn't going to be considered an adequate substitute for having a tread guard.
"But they didn't read the manual!" isn't going to absolve them of liability either.
Edit: in case you haven't seen the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y
[1] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2020/peloton-recalls-pr70p-bike...
Twitter and even here seem full of people defending Peloton when clearly there have been enough incidents to warrant some design changes.
It seems like a lot of people want to advocate returning to a time where businesses had little responsibility when it came to the dangerous products they churned out.
There are plenty of developing countries where this is still the case and lots of people/children unnecessarily die as a result. I imagine it would be hell to live in a place where many innocuous products are dangerous and people reguarly lose their kids. I don't want to live in that world.
Blame the parent instead of the company to show that they know what good parenting is, that sort of thing.
Though also some companies/people (eg. Elon Musk) do also get a weird cult of personality thing going on that is separate from this that also tends to cause some subset of people to just blindly defend them.
A treadmill is a big fast moving piece of gym equipment. It is definitely dangerous to kids, as are all treadmills. And what about like freeweights or those universal gyms with the plates that go up and down?
What about power tools? Or vacuum cleaners? Or plastic bags, or cleaning products, or whatever? Lots of stuff is dangerous for kids. This is not something for kids or suitable for use around kids, and it's hard to believe anyone thinks it would be. What happened is horrible, but I don't see why it should mean peloton cant make their product
Treadmills are dangerous and they only require a couple finger presses to operate. Kids would be in a room with one unlike power tools. Kids are not meant to be in an area with tools, gas, paint, lawn equipment etc.
Equipment should be safe enough to have in non-optimal circumstances, rather than basing things on rarely obtained ideals held by a privileged few.
No. I was pointing out the non-ideal reality. People commonly use gym equipment in multi-use area with children, if that gym equipment can suck up a child or pet, and won't stop even as it jams on them, that is a safety concern. Basing product safety on a rare ideal instead of reality is a recipe for further tragedy.
Well, the Peloton is a $4,300 device, so it goes without saying anyone who owns one is in a privileged position. Of course it doesn't mean owners have an extra room. In situations like this, there is probably at least comparative negligence.
I guess the real issue here is that many people simply do not understand how dangerous gym equipment can be. Small kids simply should not be allowed around it, no matter if there is some plastic guard part around it or not.
I suspect peloton still pursues such people all as potential customers.
Did you even read my comment?
>Of course it doesn't mean owners have an extra room.
This is not an absolute fact, but just your opinion. People are allowed to disagree with what degree of design compromise constitues "unnecessarily dangerous". Furthermore, they are allowed to object when some people try to impose their ideas of what's right and wrong onto others.
Personally I think Peloton should be able to sell treadmills with circular saw blades at each corner if people want to buy them. Who are you to decide what's right and wrong for other people?
Are you even serious?
The treadmills at many gyms lack a guard like other commenters suggest it should have. I can buy one for my home if I want.
I don't think this is the point the commenter above was making, but if it had circular saw blades on the corners, the pitchforks and torches would be out for the parents who let their kids near it; or even had one in a house with small children at all.
Are RCDs not required in your area?
The Peloton one seems to be higher and with ample space at the bottom for things to get sucked into
That's not enough information, but certainly not a smoking gun showing that peloton is dangerous vs others in its category.
[0] https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/exercise-equipmen...
And those treadmills don't tell to pull people underneath them, like this device did.
Let's not be facetious here, Peloton didn't get CPSC's attention because it is a treadmill -- it got that attention because it is an unsafe treadmill.
As far as treadmills go, preventing being pulled underneath has been a solved problem.
EDIT: compare and contrast: what Peloton does [1] vs. a $700 treadmill design [2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y
[2] https://www.walmart.com/ip/3-0HP-APP-Bluetooth-Control-Incli...
Edit: Pelotons are really heavy as well starting at about 300 lbs. Most of the ones in that weight class seem to have safety bars? The difference in a child getting a fraction of a 200 vs a fraction of a 300+ lbs treadmill from getting pulled under is massive.
Seem being the key word.
Please look at the consumer report[1], section "Unique Hazards".
The TL;DR is that height off the ground, belt design, and other factors form a uniquely unsafe combination that results in Peloton causing injuries that other treadmills don't cause.
[1]https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/peloton-plus-...
Your argument is buy this flawed treadmill, which is almost exclusively intended for home use, and never have children and pets in your home. Ever.
I don't think you informed yourself well on the issue.
Source: Have worked in product development for devices.
An exercise bike is another item that can easily hurt a child or pet if they get under the pedal when riding. Because of the flywheel, there is a lot of weighted momentum at the pedal when riding and it does not just stop if someone gets under it. I've seen videos of kids pushing something under the pedal while the parent is riding and the bike flips over. Now imagine a kids or pets head...
Finally, many say that Peloton and Apple are similar (Apple was rumored to be buying Peloton for a long time) because of their product design and rabid fan base. Now we can add another item, Peloton gets clicks on a news story. If this had been about any other equipment manufacture we likely wouldn't have even heard about it.
Pelton highlights that there is a safety key required to operate the machine and that parents are instructed to store it in a secure location inaccessible to children. [1] No treadmill manufacturer can ever fully eliminate the dangers of an active treadmill to young children and pets, and therefore I think this safety key is the essential piece. I find this similar to locking power tools away from curious young hands.
I don't want this to lead to additional regulation and compliance. Such regulation could even mislead consumers as to the danger of a treadmill. E.g., requiring some autodetection of a stuck belt to stop the motor. A foolproof mechanism would be not only expensive, but require regular inspection and maintenance to guarantee it performs this function. One could trust this mechanism while neglecting maintenance and therefore be further negligent in not securing the safety key away from children.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/product-safety/peloton-plus-...
Outside of the areas where they can and have done that, they also can recommend recalls that are voluntary, and publish consumer guidance.
As a result of that, and the additional red tape needed to issue an involuntary recall, the latter are very infrequent.
Normally, this is in the company’s interests too, since refusing to issue a suggested recall can make the company look bad too, since it can look like the company not taking safety seriously.
On the pure regulatory side, the CPSC can issue safety standards, but basically has to give industry a chance to first develop voluntary safety standards. If the industry does so, and the CPSC believes compliance will be high enough, then it cannot create its own standard.
Thieve is an implication that if the industry created standard is good enough, but companies don’t comply, the CPSC should create a mandatory standard that requires products provide safety equivalent or better then said voluntary standard.
Only when industry refuses to create standards sufficient to address safety concerns is the CPSC supposed to create its own out of whole cloth. Obviously, just the threat of doing so frequently gets the industry to create or update its own voluntary standards.
One would think a treadmill needed ramp up time to get to 15mph.
Life lessons were learned after being tossed into a filing cabinet.
I was forever fucking around with it including the flung into the China cabinet lesson.
Ever seen what happens if you throw a medicine ball onto a running treadmill at 15 mph with max incline?
Well what happens is the ball nearly decapitates your little brother before exploding through a window and then your arse gets tanned by your dads belt.
Same happens if you decide to see what’s inside your etch a sketch with an axe.
At the kitchen table.
I’m amazed I neither killed myself nor was killed by my parents.
I'm not sure what it provides compared to a similar bike plus a tablet to watch the myriad videos on YouTube.
Is it some sort of exercise status symbol to show off to their peer group (e.g. like people posting their workouts on strava)?
These bikes and treadmills seem to be double the price of a similar quality machine from existing manufacturers + an ipad, so I don't understand what the draw is for these.
Peloton really does have the best instructors but especially for the hacker new audience, you can put something together that works 95% as well for a much lower price.
I'm intrigued by Peloton, but after they basically said "we'll start air-freighting our incredibly heavy bikes to deal with the shipping backups", that seemed to be code for "our product has such fat margins that we can quintuple the shipping cost and still make money". This Echelon-based DIY solution seems to be good (especially for one's wallet).
I don't post my workouts anywhere, but my friends can see them. We end up chasing each others ghosts (if your friend already did the ride you can see and chase their stats as if they are real time), and it has pushed all of us quite a lot.
The monthly sub is high ($40) for a single person, but it includes up to 5 accounts on the same bike. So, if you're married or have roommates it's not bad.
TLDR; Peloton is the closest thing to a spin studio experience at home.
i HAVE had people tell me off for running without a mask in an empty park which is really annoying
Can't believe the company sent out an email to all of its customers announcing that incident in the first place. That kind of thing never should have left the legal department.
And an ISO spec - https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:20957:-6:ed-1:v1:en
But no indication if anybody's bothered to regulate that with force of law.
I know we regulate safety in some areas pre-emptively, like transportation law through SAE standards, but also that the US relies a lot more on after-the-fact liability precedents and "self-regulation" than somewhere like the EU, which has preemptive standards like CE marking.
You'll note the headline language: "Regulators urge recall". I don't know that this would even be a thing in a lot of places - the company has an option?
Obviously there is less red tape required to formally ask a company to consider a recall then there is in issuing an involuntary one.
And yeah, there frequently are not legally binding regulations in many areas of product safety, because the CPSC is required to defer to industry creating its own voluntary standards. Only if the industry refuses to create good enough voluntary standards, or too many companies fail to comply and create safety issues can the CPSC create mandatory standards.
Other regulators may not be as constrained here, but there is still a general culture of “government telling us what to do”=bad, so better for industries to get together and tell themselves what to do. Industry created standards can often update faster to changes in the risk landscape than bureaucrats can anyway.
And given that Peloton execs clearly know about this issue, they do deserve federal and civil legal action.
Many years ago I was at the gym and a exercise ball got loose, jammed it up, and the guy fell off. After removing the ball the treadmill didn’t resume operation.
You can see in the video the peloton jogs the motor in an attempt to free the obstruction. I presume the initial feature is to unjam a off track belt.
This seems like another Ford Pinto where the company decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than fix the product.
Edit: I didn’t mean to offend, or to be morbid. I was making a point about how that particular mindset often doesn’t lead to products that care about “boring” things like safety or long term reliability.
At which moment the product director got a mini heart-attack, sensed his/her bonus was at stake, and immediately asked the engineer(s) to be transferred to other projects.
I have a favorie Dilbert for such cases: https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10
"Not a team player"
Which seems like an incredible misfeature to me. You can see how quickly it gets going from a standstill two or three times in the video - even _if_ someone were on the treadmill (and not under it), that's exactly not the behavior you want.
Where were the parents in the video?
This is an adult gym equipment and it is not a toy. Why would regulator recall this?
For example, I am helping my son with weight training. I spot him. I never allow him to do it himself as he simply unable to control his strength yet. If he get hurt doing bench press himself for using too much weight without a spotter, is this the manufacturer’s problem or is it my problem? Of course it is my own negligence problem.
Because there are indications that it is unnecessarily unsafe in hine use, particularly to children and potentially to users.
Also, the CPSC isn’t recalling it, though they are recommending that Peloton should. They are advising consumers not to use it in hones with children, or, if they must use it in those conditions, to take a set of risk mitigation measures.
https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-...
- Large rollers (2x to 4x the diameter of other residential treadmills).
- Higher deck height.
- An inconvenient to access physical on/off switch, increasing the likelihood it will be left on.
- Apparently no safety lanyard.
- No guard under the belt. This is not common to residential treadmills in my experience, but is not as necessary without the larger rollers and higher deck height.
The comparison to free weights is not apt. This treadmill can easily be made safer with better design decisions.
If the bench broke under your son due to negligent design, I wouldn't hold you responsible, but rather the bench manufacturer.
https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/...
Unless supervision means the child never gets further away from the supervising adult's arm's reach, I think the only thing you can do is fence off the treadmill to keep free range kids and pets away.
Doesn’t seem likely. His parent would either fall because the treadmill slowed down, running into him and injuring them both or they would have told them to stop it because it’s clearly dangerous
I think rowing is some of the best cardio you can get, although I may be biased as a former rower
That's not to say that improper rowing cannot cause injury, but the correct technique for rowing alleviates all of the injury-causing jolts to your joints that occur with each stride in running.
To grind flour, hence mill. But that is the useful version of the concept. "Reverse treadmill" is what we should call the consumer product that cost emissions to produce&operate (simulate a "load" that needs to be pushed against by a citizen with no where to go).
People who exercise more are often healthier, and health has all sorts of benefits on society.
Children get hurt on stuff. This is like those magnet toys that got banned because some kids ate them. Let's not, as a society, overreact to every little thing because the children.
Tiny neodymium magnets are still readily available. You wont find them labeled as toys. The problem is not that some kids ate them (that will happen with any toy containing parts small enough to be eaten) The problem is that when eaten they cause horrible internal injuries. They can cause a kid to go from “fine”, to “has a tummy ache again” to “dying in front of your eyes” relatively quickly and you can’t even diagnose what is wrong without advanced medical imaging. This property is undesireable with something marketed as a toy.
How is this a societal overreaction? Let me reiterate, you are still able to buy the thing by the bucketloads they are just in the diy department not in the toy section.
Perhaps there need to be better warnings in the box or something. That seems like a very fine response. Recalling the machines doesn't.
Few comments are questioning why "Peloton" or are just making stuff up, like missing guards.
~3 people die a year from treadmills in the USA.
"In 2009, former boxer Mike Tyson’s daughter died when she got caught in a cord from a treadmill and accidentally hung herself"
> One of those fatalities involved a 5-year-old child, but it was not clear what occurred in that case
This is not hard to find - "Ashim Gurung died of compression of the neck, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office determined."
"at least 2,600 children a year land in the emergency room from treadmills alone, according to Kim Dulic"
" in 2001, 12 children in separate incidents in Philadelphia suffered injuries from treadmill accidents. Six of them got their hands caught in the belts and suffered abrasions and resulting scar tissue so severe that they required plastic surgery to just to be able to open their hands again."
So why Peloton other than it's hip to say bad things about Peloton? Is that the value of that child's life, not to learn, but to be hip?
Because Peloton, unlike other treadmill manufacturers for which CPSC has recommended a recall and published safety guidance, opposes the recall and the safety guidance.
There have been lots of safety recalls for treadmills and similar fitness gear (which is probably an indicator that more up-front regulation is needed), but manufacturers publicly rejecting recalls and safety guidance after large groups of injuries (including a fatality) is a different story.