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Comment by wil421 | Hacker News Reader

I assume you don't have kids. Most other products have warnings or safety features. Like guards covering circular saws or miter saws. A kid couldn't put a drill bit on a drill. My reciprocating saw could be used by a child but it's like 8 pounds. A child would never be able to put the blade on and you keep it off. If a kid started a saw everyone would come running. Treadmills are quiet.

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.

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Don’t put the gym equipment where vulnerable kids can access them, then. That’s what I do.

That seems like an opinion given from a privileged position, wherein you own a large enough dwelling to have a dedicated gym area you can prevent children entering.

Equipment should be safe enough to have in non-optimal circumstances, rather than basing things on rarely obtained ideals held by a privileged few.

Are you saying that all "equipment" sold should be in the category that it can safely be installed in a multi-use area of a home with kids in it? I get the idea that there is demand for such products, but it's pretty backward to mandate that a product can't exist that requires a dedicated area to house it. As a concrete example, everywhere I have lived requires your pool to be fenced off from the rest of your yard, because of the danger to kids (which would dwarf that of a treadmill). Should we ban pools because you need to have dedicated space for a pool in order to have one?

> Are you saying that all "equipment" sold should be in the category that it can safely be installed in a multi-use area of a home with kids in it?

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.

But why is it that every time tradgedy occurs we're looking for a systemic casuse that we can regulate away? Why not leave this to parental negligence and stop calling for more regulation everytime a child gets injured or killed?

The penalty for momentary negligence should not be death, especially when there are simple, cheap safeguards to mitigate the risk. No one is asking them to ship light fences with the thing. Moreover, having the treadmill standing up in a living room is exactly how they advertise it. It's hard to argue that's somehow unintended and unforeseeable usage.

It's not the penalty, it's just a natural consequence. Momentary negligence does frequently result in death. Taking your eyes off of two small children could kill them in many situations. It's easy - just watch your kids. My living room is perfectly safe for me and other adults, but I could come up with 5 ways those two kids could seriously harm themselves if I left them there alone for 5 minutes. The world is dangerous. The responsibility for protecting your children from harm ends with you.

Because there are lots of overworked parents and their kids do not deserve to die.

>That seems like an opinion given from a privileged position

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.

People who live inside New York City could be in that income bracket while lacking the space you assume they have. There are multiple areas of the country with that cross-section of high property costs and high income.

Sure, and if they lack space, some things simply are not an option. These folks in tight NYC spaces wouldn’t install a table saw and a router table in their living room either.

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.

> Sure, and if they lack space, some things simply are not an option.

I suspect peloton still pursues such people all as potential customers.

>lacking the space you assume they have

Did you even read my comment?

>Of course it doesn't mean owners have an extra room.

The peloton treadmill is uniquely, unnecessarily, gratuitously dangerous. Peloton could have spent $5 on a guard over the back, but they didn’t, probably because they wanted it to look cool.

> The peloton treadmill is uniquely, unnecessarily, gratuitously dangerous.

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?

"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?

We allow companies to sell dangerous items all the time. People are mad at Peloton because treadmills are not generally thought of as unsafe.

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.

I think most treadmills have a guard just under them, not behind them. At least at every gym I’ve been to that’s the case.

Most houses are sold with outlets that can be extremely dangerous for kids. Do we need more regulation for this too?

Yes.

Are RCDs not required in your area?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device

We, in fact, have added more regulation in that area. Outlets installed below 5.5 feet are required by code to be tamper-resistant so that they aren't dangerous to children.

A majority of the google image results for "treadmill" don't have an obvious guard, so the Peloton one doesn't seem uniquely dangerous.

Gym treadmills probably can do without it, others might be close enough to the floor to prevent such accidents happening

The Peloton one seems to be higher and with ample space at the bottom for things to get sucked into

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