This is all about parents failing to watch/police their children. Treadmills are exercise devices and not toys.
Do you leave loaded guns laying around -- and depend on watching your kids to stop them from shooting each other?
Do you leave ungated open stairways for toddlers to fall down?
Do you leave sharp knives laying out for you toddler?
Responsible parents know its impossible to "watch every second" and take precautions to remove potential harm from the environment.
The Peloton is a high end exercise device and is not a toy meant for small kids or pets, and like all other gym exercise equipment, putting your pet or small kid on it for a laugh (making a video) or not watching your kid while they play on it is a fail on the parents part.
If you have kids (boys) having any guns around house is a 18 year accident waiting to happen, one day soon the way things are going right now the first part of the 2nd amendment ( A well regulated Militia ) will be used, to define gun ownership, in short actual service to the country.
How ridiculous. Almost every single treadmill has that same basic design...kids should not be around any exercise equipment while in use: treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, etc. can all hurt someone quite easily...
That treadmill lacks a rear guard that would have prevented from that to happen.
I don't think just adding a rear guard to this model will fix the problem. As I've said above, the belt is raised so high off the ground that such a guard would have to go from the back and all the way underneath. It would only take that pink ball from the video to go a little past a normal rear guard for it to be pulled under.
The fix here is either to lower the belt AND add a rear guard, or stop shipping this design.
And, Peloton should apologise, and improve their product design.
This is all about parents failing to watch/police their children. Treadmills are exercise devices and not toys.
Do you leave loaded guns laying around -- and depend on watching your kids to stop them from shooting each other?
Do you leave ungated open stairways for toddlers to fall down?
Do you leave sharp knives laying out for you toddler?
Responsible parents know its impossible to "watch every second" and take precautions to remove potential harm from the environment.
The Peloton is a high end exercise device and is not a toy meant for small kids or pets, and like all other gym exercise equipment, putting your pet or small kid on it for a laugh (making a video) or not watching your kid while they play on it is a fail on the parents part.
If you have kids (boys) having any guns around house is a 18 year accident waiting to happen, one day soon the way things are going right now the first part of the 2nd amendment ( A well regulated Militia ) will be used, to define gun ownership, in short actual service to the country.
Nobody intended the Peloton to be a "toy for kids" and, obviously that is not the problem.
You second comment emphasizes the problem: unintended and deadly consequences from a well intended product or action.
How ridiculous. Almost every single treadmill has that same basic design...kids should not be around any exercise equipment while in use: treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, etc. can all hurt someone quite easily...
Not true. If you had done some cursory research, you'd know that the Tread+ is higher off the ground than most treadmills, has no rear belt guard, the belt runs exposed for the entire length of the underside of the unit, the rear is easy to lift off the ground, and the belt is ribbed, which makes it easier to grip skin and hair. There are certainly other treadmills that possess one or two of those characteristics, but not all of them, which is what makes the Tread+ more dangerous than the average treadmill. Most treadmills have rear guards that make it almost impossible for someone to get sucked under, but Peloton decided not to spend an extra $10 to make a $4,000 product safer, and still refuses to do so.
The CPSC didn't just wake up one morning and decide to screw with Peloton. The design of the unit and the statistics support that it is dangerous, and Peloton's response that it should be locked in a room to prevent injuries is absurd since most people don't have special "treadmill rooms." All Peloton needs to do is add a plastic guard.
How ridiculous. Almost every single treadmill has that same basic design...kids should not be around any exercise equipment while in use: treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, etc. can all hurt someone quite easily...
But it could be the 39 reported incidents seem to be abnormal amount of reports for one machine compared to others.
There were 22,500 treadmill related injury incidents reported by emergency rooms in 2019...2000 of those were children under 8. As I said, kids shouldn't be around exercise equipment.
Based on the numbers, sounds more like adults shouldn’t be allowed near treadmills.
Society is getting stupider. And parents just shirking their responsibility.
I absolutely agree that there is an element of parental responsibility. But that doesn't stop this being a dangerous product. It's like selling a circular saw without a guard. Given that there are very simple solutions to this problem (guard and auto-shutoff) that would make the device considerably less dangerous and have no impact on its utility, I think it's unacceptable to not implement them.
There’s a branch of industrial automation called Functional Safety so I know these devices could be designed with additional safety features, guards, presence detection, weight detection, light curtains, etc., beyond the tethered safety key feature that most treadmills have.
But I also know from having spent time in factories since I was a teenager that some people will always find a way to defeat the safety devices, no matter how fail safe you design them to be.
I hate to use the term “idiot proofing” because children should not be expected to step in when parents or adults fail them, but there is a certain notion that idiot proofing usually fails in the presence of an even dumber idiot than what you designed for.
Adults need to step up and be adults. And this includes adult designers.
There’s a branch of industrial automation called Functional Safety so I know these devices could be designed with additional safety features, guards, presence detection, weight detection, light curtains, etc., beyond the tethered safety key feature that most treadmills have.
But I also know from having spent time in factories since I was a teenager that some people will always find a way to defeat the safety devices, no matter how fail safe you design them to be.
I hate to use the term “idiot proofing” because children should not be expected to step in when parents or adults fail them, but there is a certain notion that idiot proofing usually fails in the presence of an even dumber idiot than what you designed for.
Adults need to step up and be adults. And this includes adult designers.
Idiot proofing expects that humans will be human and dumb things will happen. It's why cars have bumpers -- and why this treadmill should either be lower to the ground or have a guard -- or both.
There’s a branch of industrial automation called Functional Safety so I know these devices could be designed with additional safety features, guards, presence detection, weight detection, light curtains, etc., beyond the tethered safety key feature that most treadmills have.
But I also know from having spent time in factories since I was a teenager that some people will always find a way to defeat the safety devices, no matter how fail safe you design them to be.
I hate to use the term “idiot proofing” because children should not be expected to step in when parents or adults fail them, but there is a certain notion that idiot proofing usually fails in the presence of an even dumber idiot than what you designed for.
Adults need to step up and be adults. And this includes adult designers.
Idiot proofing expects that humans will be human and dumb things will happen. It's why cars have bumpers -- and why this treadmill should either be lower to the ground or have a guard -- or both.
Yup. Designing this product with greater concern for functional safety would have resulted in a safer product, but it still would not be totally safe.
The obvious question with the videos we're seeing with children around a running treadmill is "Where is the adult and why is the machine running with no adult present?" Would you leave a running chainsaw or wood chipper in your yard unsupervised with even a remote possibility of children being present? I hope the answer is no, but these videos make me wonder whether I'm jumping to conclusions.
I'm a big proponent of Empathic Design approaches, i.e., designing for people. This is really just an extension of other design approaches as evident in use cases, user stories, user scenarios, etc., which often start with a declaration of the intended user/person a requirement is directed at addressing, e.g., "As a exercise machine user ... blah blah blah." This makes sense, especially for in-band scenarios that focus on functionality. The verification & validation of the product implementations can thus be traced directly back to these user-centric requirements. But as anyone whose ever done any kind of testing knows, you also have to test for the exceptional cases and non happy path scenarios where the inputs are invalid or the actions of the user are outside of the tightly controlled constraints of functional test cases.
When it comes to product safety I would imagine non happy path test scenarios would include "unintended users" who can be expected to be in the vicinity of the product, i.e., those who are clearly never expected to be using the product in the first place. These test cases should at least consider scenarios where the unintended users are children (and pets) and should compel designers to take some steps to avoid dangerous outcomes. I think the treadmill safety key is a good first step, but in the Peloton case, possibly not enough because the product design apparently left too little safety margin to account for inattentive parents/lack of adult supervision. Better guards could have improved the safety margin and potential consequences of inattentive parents/lack of adult supervision, but they would not totally eliminate the risk.
No matter what the product maker does, there will always be risks that rely on adults to mitigate risk to children. Putting "this is not a toy" on plastic wrap and homer buckets, or "remove this key when not in use," or "do not use this device indoors" have no value to prevent children from misusing the products. They do serve as instructions for parents/adults to follow to protect themselves and those they are obligated to protect from harm, but only if parents/adults heed the instructions.
There’s a branch of industrial automation called Functional Safety so I know these devices could be designed with additional safety features, guards, presence detection, weight detection, light curtains, etc., beyond the tethered safety key feature that most treadmills have.
But I also know from having spent time in factories since I was a teenager that some people will always find a way to defeat the safety devices, no matter how fail safe you design them to be.
I hate to use the term “idiot proofing” because children should not be expected to step in when parents or adults fail them, but there is a certain notion that idiot proofing usually fails in the presence of an even dumber idiot than what you designed for.
Adults need to step up and be adults. And this includes adult designers.
Idiot proofing expects that humans will be human and dumb things will happen. It's why cars have bumpers -- and why this treadmill should either be lower to the ground or have a guard -- or both.
Yup. Designing this product with greater concern for functional safety would have resulted in a safer product, but it still would not be totally safe.
The obvious question with the videos we're seeing with children around a running treadmill is "Where is the adult and why is the machine running with no adult present?" Would you leave a running chainsaw or wood chipper in your yard unsupervised with even a remote possibility of children being present? I hope the answer is no, but these videos make me wonder whether I'm jumping to conclusions.
I'm a big proponent of Empathic Design approaches, i.e., designing for people. This is really just an extension of other design approaches as evident in use cases, user stories, user scenarios, etc., which often start with a declaration of the intended user/person a requirement is directed at addressing, e.g., "As a exercise machine user ... blah blah blah." This makes sense, especially for in-band scenarios that focus on functionality. The verification & validation of the product implementations can thus be traced directly back to these user-centric requirements. But as anyone whose ever done any kind of testing knows, you also have to test for the exceptional cases and non happy path scenarios where the inputs are invalid or the actions of the user are outside of the tightly controlled constraints of functional test cases.
When it comes to product safety I would imagine non happy path test scenarios would include "unintended users" who can be expected to be in the vicinity of the product, i.e., those who are clearly never expected to be using the product in the first place. These test cases should at least consider scenarios where the unintended users are children (and pets) and should compel designers to take some steps to avoid dangerous outcomes. I think the treadmill safety key is a good first step, but in the Peloton case, possibly not enough because the product design apparently left too little safety margin to account for inattentive parents/lack of adult supervision. Better guards could have improved the safety margin and potential consequences of inattentive parents/lack of adult supervision, but they would not totally eliminate the risk.
No matter what the product maker does, there will always be risks that rely on adults to mitigate risk to children. Putting "this is not a toy" on plastic wrap and homer buckets, or "remove this key when not in use," or "do not use this device indoors" have no value to prevent children from misusing the products. They do serve as instructions for parents/adults to follow to protect themselves and those they are obligated to protect from harm, but only if parents/adults heed the instructions.
One factor at play here is not just risk but the degree of potential injury.
Yes, treadmills are inherently dangerous -- I posted a video of 'treadmill fails' earlier. But those mishaps were (mostly) of the broken arm variety from being thrown off the back of the moving treadmill.
The danger from the Peloton is getting trapped underneath the moving belt which, with its ribs, would act like a belt sander grinding away at the trapped person or pet. That could result in a pretty horrible death.
Comments
The Peloton is a high end exercise device and is not a toy meant for small kids or pets, and like all other gym exercise equipment, putting your pet or small kid on it for a laugh (making a video) or not watching your kid while they play on it is a fail on the parents part.
If you have kids (boys) having any guns around house is a 18 year accident waiting to happen, one day soon the way things are going right now the first part of the 2nd amendment ( A well regulated Militia ) will be used, to define gun ownership, in short actual service to the country.
The fix here is either to lower the belt AND add a rear guard, or stop shipping this design.
And, Peloton should apologise, and improve their product design.
The CPSC didn't just wake up one morning and decide to screw with Peloton. The design of the unit and the statistics support that it is dangerous, and Peloton's response that it should be locked in a room to prevent injuries is absurd since most people don't have special "treadmill rooms." All Peloton needs to do is add a plastic guard.
Idiot proofing expects that humans will be human and dumb things will happen. It's why cars have bumpers -- and why this treadmill should either be lower to the ground or have a guard -- or both.