Morning:
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Riding through the park yesterday, my four-year-old daughter went flying, having been attempting to ride her scooter one-handed.
I hadn't bothered to tell her to stop because - aside from choosing your battles with the children if you want to stay sane - they need to learn through the odd accident. Up to a point, risk is good.
I can understand why, from a lawyer's position, Maclaren has this week recalled a million buggies in the US after 12 children there, and at least one in the UK, were reported to have had fingertips crushed or cut off when the buggies were folded.
But as any parent of small children will tell you, it's impossible to avoid accidents. And I wonder whether, in fussing over infinitesimally small risks such as this, we miss the bigger ones.
It's hard to exaggerate how accident-prone the average toddler is. They fall over for no reason.
They bang their heads on something several times a day. They stick their fingers in places they shouldn't - cupboards, the hinge edge of doors, the DVD player, plug sockets - because they have no common sense.
The results can range from hilarious, in retrospect, like the time my three-year-old son managed to drain the car battery half an hour before we were due to dash for a cross-Channel ferry, to horrifying, like the friend's son whose fingertip got cut off in the front door (doctors managed to sew it back on).
Buggies offer all sorts of accident potential. When she was aged one, my eldest daughter careened down the front steps in hers, Battleship Potemkin-style, as I turned to lock the door (she was fine).
To counteract such eventualities, some parents lose their minds. I put covers on the plug sockets and a baby gate on the stairs but you can go much, much further than that - plastic pads on table edges, straps to hold down furniture, video monitors and child locks on everything from the freezer to the microwave.
My wife was once negotiating over a potential nanny share with a particularly neurotic mother. "What about toys?" the mother asked. "How would we deal with sterilising them?"
I'm all for stopping preventable accidents but this kind of behaviour seems to me to be less a sign of real danger to children and more one of middle-class people in a safe country without enough to do.
The hard truth is that children under five from low-income families are much more likely to die or be seriously injured in household accidents than their better-off peers.
That's partly because middle-class parents can afford better supervision, partly because they're better educated about the dangers.
Likewise, roads are still a serious source of accidents for children: nearly 1,800 child pedestrians were killed or seriously injured in the UK last year. But a child from a low-income family is five times more likely than one from a well-off family to die on the roads.
Until we tackle that kind of inequality, I'll find it hard to get very worked up about possible malfunctioning buggies.
Still, it was with real relief that I put our buggy away in the attic for ever a couple of months ago.
Now, instead of buggy accidents, my youngest has self-inflicted scrapes on her bike and scooter. Wearing a helmet, of course.
Reader views (5)
Hello Andrew,
I have to say I agree wholeheartedly with your article about safety and children, however what a pity you have to finish with,"instead of buggy accidents, my youngest has self-inflicted scrapes on her bike and scooter. Wearing a helmet, of course"..
It's a pity you belong to the helmet stasi brigade, there is nothing more ridiculous in mty view than a toddler on a bike, sometimes with outriders wearing a helmet.
- Frank Grainger, Old Coulsdon Surrey, 12/11/2009 17:58
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I agree with Tony and Dc. Toddlers are indeed prone to all sort of accidents but what is wrong with seeking to address dangerous design flaws ?
- Andrew E, London, 12/11/2009 13:32
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I am in absolute agreement with Tony.
What we have here is an acknowledged design fault - it is not about cases of children having accidents. It is not about the possibility of a child catching their fingers in a car door or getting access to a sharp knife. It is about little children having their fingers mutilated. And what we have is a corporate - Maclaren - acting differently in two markets where the exact same product is sold. One market is highly litigious and undertakes class actions, the other not. So are US childrens fingers cheaper that UK childrens fingers? Or different? The fingers not different - it is the legal implications that are. And there in is the issue - it should be about ensuring child safety, proactively, where possible as an absolute - over and above anything else. New parents about to buy a Maclaren buggy need to ask some searching questions on 'fit for purpose'.
- James, London, 12/11/2009 11:29
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Tony
Agreed, I don't really see what his article has to do with faulty pushchairs. Its like comparing falling off your bike by mistake with buying one with faulty wheels that fall off. One is an accident the other is a design flaw.
- Dc, London, 12/11/2009 11:16
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Andrew, you seem to be confusing (alleged) design flaws with accidents. The two are completely separate. If the same product is repeatedly causing similar injuries from its operation, and those injuries occur more often or are more severe than related products there may be a design flaw. That is not the same as kids having accident by dint of kids being kids/poor supervision. The fact that the injury rate relative to sales is low is largely irrelevant. If the injury rate is far higher than other leading buggies then there is an issue, if it is comparable (or could even be less) then there is not an issue with the buggy. Mclaren will need to investigate, but grown ups must be able to distinguish between design flaws (designing something that kids can amputate digits with) and "accidents" (falling out of a tree). And finally surely as a parent you would feel differently between a scraped knee and your child spending the rest of their life with only 9.5 fingers?
- Tony, London, 12/11/2009 10:51
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