I thought young child and big machine was a no brainer
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.
-
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"
-
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.