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Comment by gnabgib | Hacker News Reader

"A hundred people every year in the United States reportedly choke to death on these pen lids." :|

Children apparently. And common enough apparently that ISO formalized it:

> This document specifies requirements to reduce the risk of asphyxiation from caps for writing and marking instruments. It relates to such instruments which in normal or foreseeable circumstances are likely to be used by children up to the age of 14 years.

- ISO 11540:2021, https://www.iso.org/standard/81889.html

Things like this is what I think about when people talk about regulatory overreach. There are just so many details that need to be laid out for a society to function smoothly.

"People" can include toddlers, etc.

Yeah, two-year-olds love to put random found objects in their mouths, often accidentally inhale them, and often lack the correct throat motions to unstick a round object.

If memory serves, pennies are the most common object for young children to choke on, coupled by the fact that anemia makes them “tasty”. Perhaps we need to consider adding holes in coins to reduce that.

Between most metals tasting "sweet" and the mouth being a baby's foremost sensitive way of accruing information about something, babies and small kids are instinctively driven to put anything and everything in their mouth if it fits and consider metals as food until sternly educated otherwise.

It takes a long time before any of the other senses become mature enough to be (more) useful avenues of accruing information and parents can finally stop worrying about it.

I choked on a penny when I was a kid, had to be taken to the hospital and got it out.

They said that most just pass though the digestive system, I was special

I'm curious, if you were choking on a penny how did you even survive long enough to get to a hospital? Going without air will kill you in a matter of minutes, tops.

It only partially blocked my airway. I got to the hospital in minutes also, I was a toddler, my parents took me. Luckily we lived less than 2 miles from the hospital.

Holes in coins have many other advantages, including reduce material volume, potentially tactile feedback if we could have them different shapes, and so much more.

Would there be downsides outside of manufacturing cost and having to design with the hole in mind ?

In my humble experience, by far the best usage of holed coins such as the old 25 spanish pesetas coin (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Pesetas_fin_siglo_XX.j...) is the ability to serve as a stopgap for spinning top launching rope (see https://www.ionlitio.com/images/2017/08/la-peonza-moneda.jpg). Fond memories!

Ha! That unlocked some child memories! Gracias :-)

Coins used to have holes in them more often so that they could be put onto a string for counting/storage.

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