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Regulators urge safety recall of Peloton treadmill after child dies

275 points by joering2 6y ago

rgbrenner 6y ago
Most treadmills have a guard or plastic covering on the bottom that stops the tread from pulling something underneath it. From pictures, the peloton treadmill doesnt have this... so I would guess if anything gets between the back of the device and the floor, it'll pull it under the machine. Edit: confirmed (warning: video shows a child being injured): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
  My first instinct was to assume this to be parents doing a blame-game at Peloton for their own negligence. But this actually makes sense. A child or pet gets in there it really is game over. I can imagine even if an adult somehow slips up that it would be insanely painful and difficult to free yourself -- especially at a running pace.
  - richwater 6y ago
    Why are you letting your children operate a machine with absolutely no supervision?
    - trhway 6y ago
      you don't get it - this machine is inherently dangerous even with full supervision. Check the Animats comment above.
    - WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
      Huh? I’m not doing anything. Ultimately — yes — those parents are responsible for their kid’s death here. I agree. Horrible accident. But who cares? This isn’t a political boxing match. The machine should be safer. Both can be true. Go outside..
    - ironmagma 6y ago
      What is with this obsessive victim-blaming attitude? Safety regulations are a technology, we invented them for a reason.
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    If the user slips up they will pull the safety cutoff which is attached to their clothing which stops the treadmill.
    - james_pm 6y ago
      Literally nobody wears those.
      - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
        They don’t really get to complain that the machine didn’t stop when they fell if they didn’t wear the clip specifically made to stop that event. You can’t sue the bike company because you didn’t wear your helmet.
        whyenot 6y ago
        Of course you can sue the bike company, and if your foot got caught because there was no chain guard, causing you to crash and be injured in an accident, you might even win. Even if you weren't wearing a helmet.
        aidenn0 6y ago
        My bike doesn't have a chain guard. If I don't tuck my laces before going for a ride I could possibly kill myself.
- ajb 6y ago
  Yikes. Sounds like they just didn't do a safety review. Given that they are also apparently "opposing" the recall, I wouldn't trust them with a 10 foot pole now. They've put themselves in the same category as the Schlitterbahn, whose water slide decapitated a 10-year-old.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Move fast and break limbs
  - thathndude 6y ago
    Yeah. I can’t believe they’re opposing this. How can you defend your design after seeing this video.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      I don't think they have the ability to recall all the sold equipment. This isn't the same as recalling a car by having owners drive them to the nearest dealership for a modification/repair. They are advising customers to keep the safety key out of the device to prevent kids from using it. ...and I think that makes sense. A design change is already made on their newer models, but this sort of issue exists with any treadmill, which is why they all have safety keys.
- Animats 6y ago
  That's what it looks like to me, too. That's a terrible design. It's just the right height to suck a small pet under the machine and crush the animal.[1] Or a foot. Looks like Pelotron wanted a nice clean look, so they left the guards off. That looked nice in the Jetsons series in 1962.[1] But not in real life. In industry, this is called an unguarded pinch point. Classic cause of injuries and amputations. It's an OSHA violation in an industrial operation. Every other treadmill I've ever seen had substantial guarding around the pinch points. OSHA: "1910.211(d)(44): 'Pinch point' means any point other than the point of operation at which it is possible for a part of the body to be caught between the moving parts of a press or auxiliary equipment, or between moving and stationary parts of a press or auxiliary equipment or between the material and moving part or parts of the press or auxiliary equipment." [1] https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eJfm0.img https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1e... [2] https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=82 https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=82
  - thedrbrian 6y ago
    Kinda surprised they didn’t add a weight sensor on the legs so that when something is pulled under and it lifts the base it cuts the power.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Photoelectric safety switch between the back legs would’ve also worked (like a garage door beam), depending on how sturdy those legs are mounted for alignment.
      - jturpin 6y ago
        I was thinking this as well. For how much tech this thing seems to have, and for such a high price tag, they could easily justify putting, I don't know, two or three IR sensors down there.
        PurpleFoxy 6y ago
        These all introduce failure points for the product. Bit of dust floats under the treadmill and now it’s not working and you have an angry customer.
- sgpl 6y ago
  Warning for others clicking on the link, it's pretty graphic and appears to be a video of an actual incident with the treadmill. I was expecting it to be a product demo video or something.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Yes thankfully I clicked away but that really needs a warning.
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      The video has a warning.
      - rgbrenner 6y ago
        I believe he posted this right before I updated the post to add the warning. Thanks to everyone that pointed it out.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - crooked-v 6y ago
        It has a warning now. It didn't at first.
        robtaylor 6y ago
        the first five seconds of the video has warning text
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    For the people who stopped watching halfway through: thankfully the child survives at the end.
    - 6y ago
- foepys 6y ago
  This looks like a typical startup disruption approach where they wanted to build the hardware from the ground up and didn't ask industry experts why something is done the way it is.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    Reviewing profiles of Peloton mechanical engineers suggests they employ experts, including from heavily regulated industries. It seems unlikely that this was built without discussion or research. However, it’s true that they misjudged the risk here.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      In this case wouldn't it be a cultural thing for the management rather than the engineers? They're both human, but if the boss says get it done or get out, the standard is set from the top.
      - 1123581321 6y ago
        Certainly. It would be comforting, as an engineer myself, to think that management must not have considered the problem. However, the truth is that management, design and engineering are all quite capable of trying to avoid problems, potentially to great lengths, and failing anyway.
    - ironmagma 6y ago
      They may employ experts, but that's a different thing entirely from listening to them.
  - rconti 6y ago
    I'm not sure how this speculation adds to the conversation, though.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- baybal2 6y ago
  Any treadmill I've seen had a sensor which shuts down the mill if the tread gets jammed.
  - soneil 6y ago
    I think that's really the damning bit - in the video shown, you can see ripples in the belt still moving towards the kid just after the sister runs off. The belt's jammed, the user's dismounted, and it's still trying to win.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      At some point the treadmill actually spits the kid out. It reverses the speed for like one, two seconds when the kid was jammed and everything had stopped, but then it starts going back in its original direction and the kid gets sucked back in before he has time to get clear.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    Yeah the Peloton does detect itself getting jammed. You can see it automatically start running backwards to unjam itself in the video, then start running forward again. Crazy to think that someone thought that was a good idea.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Perhaps "most" is an exaggeration, since I have one which doesn't and the comments here and images found online suggest that many others don't. IMHO that video shows negligence on the part of the parents. There was a camera there but no physical presence. Exercise equipment is dangerous if not used correctly, and although I'm one who doesn't believe in "helicopter parenting", I certainly wouldn't let my kid play with a treadmill with only a camera watching.
- js2 6y ago
  My True 500 had nothing to prevent something from being pulled under it. Landice makes high end residential treadmills and their models don’t appear to either: https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/90%20SERIES_SERVICE_MANUAL.pdf https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/90%20SERIES_SERV... However, compared to those treadmills, the Peloton Tread+ has much larger diameter rollers and step-up height. It's also much heavier (455 lbs vs 340 lbs). It looks uniquely dangerous to me among residential treadmills. Landice L7 and L8: https://cdn.sweatband.com/Landice_L9_Club_Pro_Sports_Trainer_Treadmill_3_2000x2000.jpg https://cdn.sweatband.com/Landice_L9_Club_Pro_Sports_Trainer... Peloton Tread+: https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https:%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2Feditorial%2Fimages%2F621877%2Fpton-stock-peloton-stock-peloton-treadmill-recall-safety-cpsc-child-dies.jpg&w=700 https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https:%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2...
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    Thank you for sharing these pictures. They clearly show the difference in height. The Landice can be a threat for a pet or can grab/scratch a foot. The Peloton clearly/visible is higher and a small child can sneak or can be pulled under it.
  - trhway 6y ago
    on the page 90 there is visible a crossbar which prevents from pulling in under. You can also see it here https://www.treadmillreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Landice-L7-Treadmill-1.png https://www.treadmillreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/... Most threadmills have it, and it is hard to imagine why a one wouldn't have it.
    - js2 6y ago
      Landice calls them deck slats and they are structural members that hold the two halves of the treadmill together. You can see that clearly on page 4 here: https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/Install%20TreadBelt%2C%20Deck%20%26%20Impact%20Absorbers.pdf https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/Install%20TreadB... (Aside, but I love that Landice puts their excellent technical documentation online.) If they also serve a safety purpose, great. (My True has these too, but there's about 2-3" between the horizontal bar and the belt.) The Peloton Tread+ must have the horizontal structural cross-members inside the belt. They'd have to make the side rails taller to accommodate a safety bar: https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035933551-Slat-Belt-Sagging-Underneath-The-Tread- https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/articles/36003593355...
- rconti 6y ago
  Yes, the video confirms what I expected from the description. And yeah, the video is a bit gruesome but apparently he was okay. We have a Peloton Treadmill (now called the Tread+, but the original one is the same as the Tread+), in fact my wife is running on it right now. If you do a Google Image Search for "treadmill", you will see most treadmills are belt-style, and often have a metal bar underneath the back, a few inches in. NOT a cover on the back -- the plastic cover is typically on the FRONT of most treadmills, which won't help with things getting sucked underneath at the back, which is where this would happen. The Tread+ is a "slat style" treadmill similar to something really high end like a $10k+ Woodway, but other brands also sell slatted style treadmills. It's definitely obvious how something can get sucked under the back of the tread, however I'm not sure how much better having a protective bar is; I really wouldn't want an arm to get sucked between the belt and a protective bar underneath, which is usually at least a few inches from the underside of the belt. And of course the Tread+ is something like 450lbs; the heavier the treadmill, the more problematic something like this is likely to be. Having it shut off when something goes under it does't really help; I'm not sure I'd want my kid to get crushed by a stationary treadmill either. Like most treadmills, the Tread has a safety key which you're supposed to wear (but not everyone does, and of course kids playing on it are not going to). Actually, I just realized the obvious answer is, if you have kids, take the safety key off when you're not using it. But, mistakes happen, and of course something can also get sucked under when a properly trained adult is using the device as well. (One of our cats took a serious blow to the head from the swinging arm of our elliptical, but he was fine; cat.) I definitely wouldn't want anything going under the pedals of our Peloton bike either; metal pedal plus speed plus flywheel mass would be a REALLY bad time. Back to the Tread, the belt stops if there's no weight on it for "a while" but I'm not sure how long; certainly it takes more than 10 seconds. And, again, you'd be left with a kid trapped under a STOPPED treadmill which is not much better. There's no particular safety for turning it on. Typically I select my profile on the touchscreen but the knobs on the side to start the belt are active before starting a class. I think they might even be active when the tablet is "on" (tap the power button on the cross bar first) but before choosing a profile. I suppose a workaround would be to require a login before turning it on, but of course this is a step most other treadmills don't have either.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
- thathndude 6y ago
  Holy sh!t. This is indefensible. That Peloton is even trying to defend itself is asinine. They need to pull this product ASAP.
- deleted 6y ago
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- avianlyric 6y ago
  What I find most amazing in that video is that the treadmill stalls, detects an error condition, reverses for a second, then immediately goes full pelt forward again. It’s crazy to think the treadmill has the ability to detect a potentially dangerous situation (the belt is completely jammed). But instead of shutting down, it does everything it can to keep operating and doing as much damage as possible. Peloton didn’t need to add extra guards or sensors, they just needed someone to program the damn thing to shutdown when it jams. Rather than programming it with some dangerous and stupid auto-unjam sequence.
  - herpderperator 6y ago
    > Peloton didn't need to add extra guards or sensors, they just needed... This is a very naive comment. Substantial damage can be caused prior to the system detecting an error condition; this is no excuse for not having guards.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    The good news with this is that they can deploy software updates with their treadmills, so they'll likely fix this.
    - biofox 6y ago
      I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but software should never be used to compensate for unsafe hardware. That lesson should have become standard knowledge after the Therac-25 disaster, which happened as a result of replacing a hardware interlock with a software one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
      - avianlyric 5y ago
        Software is used to make hardware safe all the time. Look in any factory with automation and you’ll find hundreds Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) running safety critical operations, and acting as interlocks. Look inside a car, and you can find a dozen software based systems designed to make the hardware safer. E.g. Traction control, body stability systems, ABS breaking, software that decides which airbags fire in a collision, lane departure computer vision systems, air pressure alerts, engine control systems that look for unsafe operating conditions etc etc Ultimately software can be made safe. Long and rigorous software development processes and audit process are what makes it safe. Ultimately there’s nothing inherently safer about hardware safety systems, they’re engineered and suffer from human error. Proper risk assessments are always required, and safety systems should be built to match the risk. There’s no one size fits all’s. In Pelotons case, they clearly failed to assess and address the risk properly.
- ljm 6y ago
  Treadmills aren't child-friendly machines either, so why is this video showing two children messing around with the machine without any supervision?
- js2 6y ago
  I just watched the video. Every treadmill I’m familiar with has a safety key attached to a lanyard that the runner is supposed to attach to their waist band that immediacy pulls the key and deactivates the treadmill if the runner falls. I don’t know how this treadmill is still operating after the older child gets off. Maybe the key was left in place and the treadmill left turned on but that’s really f’ing dangerous. A modern treadmill should reset itself after a period of non-use and require the key to be removed and re-inserted. That’s in addition to a physical safety guard under the belt this treadmill clearly should have (see my post elsewhere in this thread comparing the size of the Peloton to another premium residential brand). This Peloton is a death machine. I didn’t realize the CSPC doesn’t have the regulatory authority to force a recall. ETA: just learned yet another thing. It’s really hard to physically reach the switch to turn it off. The switch is located under the treadmill. Wtf. See the 8 minute mark of this video: https://youtu.be/McgwmLkYJPc https://youtu.be/McgwmLkYJPc
  - bikeshaving 6y ago
    I was a child once. I have distinct memories of playing with treadmills. Turning them on while sitting on them. Running Hot Wheels Cars on them while they’re running. The design of these treadmills is pure negligence regardless of safety keys or kill switches.
    - js2 6y ago
      There are advantages to large rollers, a high deck and a heavy chassis. But these are all things that make this a more dangerous machine that other residential treadmills. Peloton should reduce that risk with a physical barrier under the deck. But even with that, this treadmill should still have a safety key and an accessible (for an adult) physical on/off switch.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    These treadmills also have safety keys. The mom in these cases, is leaving them in. Definitely some changes Peloton can make though.
- BrissyCoder 6y ago
  This is truly terrible design and I hope the machines are recalled... but there is more than a little onus on the parents here (at least in case of the linked video - can't speak to the other incidents). If you are responsible for children that age you should be actively evaluating your home for these types of risks. Letting them play on a piece of machinery like that unsupervised is neglect imo. From the time the little girl notices something is wrong (and is presumably and making a lot of noise) there is still no adult visible after a full 35 seconds has elapsed.
- anfilt 6y ago
  I have seen lots of trade mills without a guard there. Just googling image shows quite a few that don't have a guard there. If the issue is the guard it's more than just peloton that then needs to revise their design. What I do find more interesting is how the treadmill is still running even after the other kid gets off. There is a reason a lot treadmills have lanyard that shuts it off.
- throwaway189262 6y ago
  I don't understand how they released it like that. When my mom told me about kids getting stuck I immediately said "yeah under the back right?" And I've only seen Peloton in ads. What a stupid design. They deserve to get sued into oblivion
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
benatkin 6y ago
This messes up my view of the whole company, as well as my afternoon. I was just starting to get interested in Peloton but since I hadn't gotten into it, it's easy to drop the idea. I hope their reasoning isn't that a child shouldn't have used it. Kids love video games. They need to figure out how to minimize the risk in addition to doing all they can to prevent kids from using it.
- yuliyp 6y ago
  Sadly that's exactly their reasoning: "The Peloton Tread+ is safe for use at home when operated as directed and in accordance with our warnings and safety instructions"
  - ohazi 6y ago
    One of the lessons you're eventually supposed to learn when designing consumer products is that you don't get to decide what "used correctly" means. If, in actual use, some people are leaving the key in the treadmill, then just having the key and two sentences in the manual isn't going to be considered an adequate substitute for having a tread guard. "But they didn't read the manual!" isn't going to absolve them of liability either.
    - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
      I think the question of “should the design have prevented this?” Would factor in. If someone doesn’t clip the safety cord to themselves and then trips and the machine keeps running and injures them, the only possible way to stop this kind of event is with a safety clip which was already provided and the user chose to not use.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - omnicognate 6y ago
        If you do a google images search for "running treadmill" you'll see most of them have some design aspect that would prevent the accident shown in the video, most commonly a bar or guard of some sort that would stop a child or large object being dragged under. Edit: in case you haven't seen the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y
ohazi 6y ago
> Asked for a response, a spokesperson for Peloton, Jessica Kleiman, told Insider that the company was "disappointed that CPSC is mischaracterizing the situation." The hubris... The only correct response would have been something along the lines of "we have no comment at this time." The job is to communicate that you are aware of an issue, that you are investigating, and/or that you are cooperating. If you want to lobby for favorable treatment from regulators, hire an external lobbying firm to do it quietly, don't get into a public flame war with the CPSC. How are PR/spokespeople for high profile companies still making these kind of amateur hour mistakes in 2021? Isn't the public record absolutely littered with comments like these that just made the company look worse?
- deleted 6y ago
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- whatshisface 6y ago
  Most people aren't as Machiavellian as your typical armchair industry analyst would suppose. If you accuse a board that their product is killing children, would you expect them to think "we better make sure our PR department covers this up as effectively as possible," or would you expect indignation and denial?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - oivey 6y ago
    I would expect “we’re investigating this issue and/or taking corrective action” because that’s the actually empathetic thing to do when a child has died and others have been injured. No PR department should be putting out knee jerk reactions. It’s their job not to. That their reaction is to deflect blame doesn’t bode well for them making an effort to address the problem. Peloton is not even just deflecting blame here. They are accusing the government of basically lying.
    - HenryBemis 6y ago
loonster 6y ago
The level of risk is magnitudes more with the waterslide. Allowing children to use exercise equipment is a Darwin award for the parents. It is just below allowing them to use power tools unsupervised
- ihumanable 6y ago
  Go read the actual urgent warning from the CPSC https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-Consumers-Stop-Using-the-Peloton-Tread https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-... > 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. This isn't a case of user-negligence, this is an inherently unsafe design where Peloton decided not to put a guard on the back of the machine.
  - loonster 6y ago
    In my mind, it is in the same category as a power tool. A parent would be an idiot to use a circular saw near a young child. Using a treadmill near children is stupid. Bad things happen when people do stupid stuff.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      Nah. The key difference is that power tools are supposed to reshape matter. Like knives, circular saws are inherently dangerous. This is more like a fan: some designs are very dangerous, but it's possible to design versions that are both effective and reasonably safe.
      - loonster 6y ago
        Its essentially a giant belt sander. Some belt Sanders are more dangerous than others. I have a toddler in my household. Even thinking of them playing around any treadmill gives me an anxiety attack. If you want a household item, it's like a stand mixer. Something that could break bones if not worse.
fmakunbound 6y ago
I need a key to start my Sole, and you can attach the key to yourself while operating it (in case you fall off). A child getting mangled under the tread couldn’t have happened with that simple mechanism in place.
- tigershark 6y ago
  In the video that another user posted the treadmill was already running because the sister was using it and the little child was sucked inside. How the key would have helped in this situation?
  - phnofive 6y ago
    The children were playing with it unsupervised - presumably this is why there was a camera trained on them, but no one was actually watching.
    - slantyyz 6y ago
      Substitute the girl using the treadmill with one of the parents. The kid with the ball still gets caught, although the treadmill could get stopped sooner. Unless supervision means the child never gets further away from the supervising adult's arm's reach, I think the only thing you can do is fence off the treadmill to keep free range kids and pets away.
      - g00gler 6y ago
        > Substitute the girl using the treadmill with one of the parents. The kid with the ball still gets caught, although the treadmill could get stopped sooner. Doesn’t seem likely. His parent would either fall because the treadmill slowed down, running into him and injuring them both or they would have told them to stop it because it’s clearly dangerous
  - bdibs 6y ago
    As soon as the girl got off instead of continuing to drag the child under it, it would have stopped. It probably wouldn't have completely stopped it from happening but it certainly would have improved the outcome.
roland35 6y ago
I have a hard time believing that there aren't very specific regulations for threadmills that address hazards. When I worked on a consumer robotics project we had to follow IEC standards which defined exactly how far a hand could reach to moving parts, how big a stop button must be, etc.
- mapt 6y ago
  I'm finding an ASTM spec - https://www.astm.org/Standards/F2115.htm https://www.astm.org/Standards/F2115.htm And an ISO spec - https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:20957:-6:ed-1:v1:en https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:20957:-6:ed-1:v1:en But no indication if anybody's bothered to regulate that with force of law. I know we regulate safety in some areas pre-emptively, like transportation law through SAE standards, but also that the US relies a lot more on after-the-fact liability precedents and "self-regulation" than somewhere like the EU, which has preemptive standards like CE marking. You'll note the headline language: "Regulators urge recall". I don't know that this would even be a thing in a lot of places - the company has an option?
  - jsmith45 6y ago
    The company has the option of doing it voluntarily, or the regulator can start the process of forcing a recall. Obviously there is less red tape required to formally ask a company to consider a recall then there is in issuing an involuntary one. And yeah, there frequently are not legally binding regulations in many areas of product safety, because the CPSC is required to defer to industry creating its own voluntary standards. Only if the industry refuses to create good enough voluntary standards, or too many companies fail to comply and create safety issues can the CPSC create mandatory standards. Other regulators may not be as constrained here, but there is still a general culture of “government telling us what to do”=bad, so better for industries to get together and tell themselves what to do. Industry created standards can often update faster to changes in the risk landscape than bureaucrats can anyway.
moneytide1 6y ago
It's more alarming that people are spending this amount of money (aka deploying factory labor, conveyor belts, induction motors, plastic molding, heart rate screens, grid electricity) for the ability to run in place like a hamster.
- Bancakes 6y ago
  You get to run in a clean, climate controlled environment with near zero risk of body injury. Plus with all the covid lockdowns, this is one of the best cardio you can get.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Is the treadmill not bad for your knees? (Obviously not as bad as concrete I guess but you get the point). I think rowing is some of the best cardio you can get, although I may be biased as a former rower
    - jedberg 6y ago
      Rowing is only slightly better for your knees than running. If you are worried about knees, swimming is the best cardio, because it puts almost no strain on your joints.
      - _huayra_ 6y ago
        Rowing is a lot closer to swimming than running, primarily because the load on your joints is dictated by the output of your muscles, whereas in running the load is primarily impacted by each of the small "falls back to Earth" you do with each step. That's not to say that improper rowing cannot cause injury, but the correct technique for rowing alleviates all of the injury-causing jolts to your joints that occur with each stride in running.
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        I took up fencing after I stopped rowing, which is apparently even worse, so maybe just do the opposite of whatever I say
varispeed 6y ago
If this was a small company, wouldn't regulator simply shut it down?
jdavis703 6y ago
What I’m not understanding, how is a Peloton more dangerous than a regular treadmill?
- gruez 6y ago
  from an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846861
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Normal treadmills have a safety limit switch that disengages the motor when it senses an obstruction. Many years ago I was at the gym and a exercise ball got loose, jammed it up, and the guy fell off. After removing the ball the treadmill didn’t resume operation. You can see in the video the peloton jogs the motor in an attempt to free the obstruction. I presume the initial feature is to unjam a off track belt.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    Is that not required by law? Surely the engineers thought about this scenario and advised management to include a safety limit switch. Did management just ignore the engineers? This seems like another Ford Pinto where the company decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than fix the product.
    - bdibs 6y ago
      "Move fast and break things." Edit: I didn’t mean to offend, or to be morbid. I was making a point about how that particular mindset often doesn’t lead to products that care about “boring” things like safety or long term reliability.
    - HenryBemis 6y ago
      I fear that some engineer(s) probably said at some point: what if a puppy/toddler is grabbed/pinched/pulled underneath? At which moment the product director got a mini heart-attack, sensed his/her bonus was at stake, and immediately asked the engineer(s) to be transferred to other projects. I have a favorie Dilbert for such cases: https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 "Not a team player"
dang 6y ago
Url changed from https://www.businessinsider.com/regulators-urge-safety-recall-of-peloton-treadmill-after-child-dies-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/regulators-urge-safety-recal..., which points to this.
treeman79 6y ago
Was like 12. Speed was set via a dial. One would think a treadmill needed ramp up time to get to 15mph. Life lessons were learned after being tossed into a filing cabinet.
- jamiek88 6y ago
  I would deffo have died as a kid if our treadmill had this design. I was forever fucking around with it including the flung into the China cabinet lesson. Ever seen what happens if you throw a medicine ball onto a running treadmill at 15 mph with max incline? Well what happens is the ball nearly decapitates your little brother before exploding through a window and then your arse gets tanned by your dads belt. Same happens if you decide to see what’s inside your etch a sketch with an axe. At the kitchen table. I’m amazed I neither killed myself nor was killed by my parents.
  - christophilus 6y ago
    As a relatively new dad, you just gave me heart palpitations.
ajb 6y ago
When my parents were children, everyone heated their houses with an open fire, and if you did something wrong on any day it would kill you. When I was a child, we had a boiler which was perfectly safe so long as you paid someone to service it once a year. Pretty much all the things my parents grew up with had no safety features, pretty much all the things I grew up with did. We have moved to a society where things are expected to be safe except for a number of well known exceptions, and this is good: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. " Alfred North Whitehead As technologists it is our business to know and understand the consequences of the mechanisms we build. We value greater understanding and perception. But it is a mistake to project this value system onto society as a whole, since, as the quote shows, the worth of what we build is precisely to allow others to avoid this burden. That applies in safety as much as anything else. As technologists we can see that if a device has a 500W motor in it , it bears thinking about whether there are any safety issues. But consumers rightly expect any safety issues to be pointed out to them. What worries me is when companies are run by people who don't understand that all our safety is the result of a lot of work, and so don't realise the amount of diligence required.
- donw 6y ago
  Yes and no. Peleton should redesign the treadmill. It is needlessly hazardous, and a few small changes could easily remedy the problem without compromising the envelope of functionality for the device. But: I absolutely hate modern appliances with egregious safety buffers, as to reduce their functional envelope down to precisely what the designers imagined, and nothing more. Also, and I realize this is an unpopular stance: Danger is important for children. I'm not suggesting that we need to start giving kids industrial metal saws or machine guns as soon as they can walk, but we do need to stop hiding them from the world. Kids need to learn how to live their lives, and that means getting hurt and learning from it. Our job as engineers is, within the above limits, to try and keep those lessons from being lethal, disfiguring, or crippling.
wruza 6y ago
Four IR sensors on a perimeter below the tread should do the job (interrupt the beam and it stops). Idk how companies come up with such non-safe products, even without regulation. It’s just a common sense to add some trivial safety to mechanisms.
aaron695 6y ago
I really hope most of the commentators here never get positions of responsibility. Few comments are questioning why "Peloton" or are just making stuff up, like missing guards. ~3 people die a year from treadmills in the USA. "In 2009, former boxer Mike Tyson’s daughter died when she got caught in a cord from a treadmill and accidentally hung herself" > One of those fatalities involved a 5-year-old child, but it was not clear what occurred in that case This is not hard to find - "Ashim Gurung died of compression of the neck, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office determined." "at least 2,600 children a year land in the emergency room from treadmills alone, according to Kim Dulic" " in 2001, 12 children in separate incidents in Philadelphia suffered injuries from treadmill accidents. Six of them got their hands caught in the belts and suffered abrasions and resulting scar tissue so severe that they required plastic surgery to just to be able to open their hands again." So why Peloton other than it's hip to say bad things about Peloton? Is that the value of that child's life, not to learn, but to be hip?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > So why Peloton other than it's hip to say bad things about Peloton? Because Peloton, unlike other treadmill manufacturers for which CPSC has recommended a recall and published safety guidance, opposes the recall and the safety guidance. There have been lots of safety recalls for treadmills and similar fitness gear (which is probably an indicator that more up-front regulation is needed), but manufacturers publicly rejecting recalls and safety guidance after large groups of injuries (including a fatality) is a different story.
bigmattystyles 6y ago
If all they can do is urge a recall, I don’t know if they should be called regulators.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  They are called regulators because they can, among other mandatory powers, establish mandatory standards for products and ban product categories. Outside of the areas where they can and have done that, they also can recommend recalls that are voluntary, and publish consumer guidance.
- jsmith45 6y ago
  The CPSC can initiate Involuntary recalls, but they always try to negotiate voluntary recalls first. Involuntary recalls always get right leaning individuals to start screening about governmental overreach, and to start looking at how to kill off the the CPSC. So it is very much preferred to try to get companies to agree to voluntary recalls. As a result of that, and the additional red tape needed to issue an involuntary recall, the latter are very infrequent. Normally, this is in the company’s interests too, since refusing to issue a suggested recall can make the company look bad too, since it can look like the company not taking safety seriously. On the pure regulatory side, the CPSC can issue safety standards, but basically has to give industry a chance to first develop voluntary safety standards. If the industry does so, and the CPSC believes compliance will be high enough, then it cannot create its own standard. Thieve is an implication that if the industry created standard is good enough, but companies don’t comply, the CPSC should create a mandatory standard that requires products provide safety equivalent or better then said voluntary standard. Only when industry refuses to create standards sufficient to address safety concerns is the CPSC supposed to create its own out of whole cloth. Obviously, just the threat of doing so frequently gets the industry to create or update its own voluntary standards.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
Seems everybody who reads this headline instantaneously becomes an expert in the safe design of exercise equipment.
wdn 6y ago
Probably not popular opinion: Where were the parents in the video? This is an adult gym equipment and it is not a toy. Why would regulator recall this? For example, I am helping my son with weight training. I spot him. I never allow him to do it himself as he simply unable to control his strength yet. If he get hurt doing bench press himself for using too much weight without a spotter, is this the manufacturer’s problem or is it my problem? Of course it is my own negligence problem.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > This is an adult gym equipment and it is not a toy. Why would regulator recall this? Because there are indications that it is unnecessarily unsafe in hine use, particularly to children and potentially to users. Also, the CPSC isn’t recalling it, though they are recommending that Peloton should. They are advising consumers not to use it in hones with children, or, if they must use it in those conditions, to take a set of risk mitigation measures. https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-Consumers-Stop-Using-the-Peloton-Tread https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-...
- js2 6y ago
  Other brands of residential treadmill do not cause injuries at the same rate and are not nearly as dangerous. I am a runner and have a lot of experience with treadmills. This treadmill has some features that make it uniquely dangerous: - Large rollers (2x to 4x the diameter of other residential treadmills). - Higher deck height. - An inconvenient to access physical on/off switch, increasing the likelihood it will be left on. - Apparently no safety lanyard. - No guard under the belt. This is not common to residential treadmills in my experience, but is not as necessary without the larger rollers and higher deck height. The comparison to free weights is not apt. This treadmill can easily be made safer with better design decisions. If the bench broke under your son due to negligent design, I wouldn't hold you responsible, but rather the bench manufacturer.
  - js2 6y ago
    I can't edit my comment above at this point, but it does have a safety key/lanyard: https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360089898972/Peloton_Tread_Plus_User_Manual.pdf https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/...
andrew_v4 6y ago
I've read a lot of the comments here condemning Peloton, and I don't think I completely agree. A treadmill is a big fast moving piece of gym equipment. It is definitely dangerous to kids, as are all treadmills. And what about like freeweights or those universal gyms with the plates that go up and down? What about power tools? Or vacuum cleaners? Or plastic bags, or cleaning products, or whatever? Lots of stuff is dangerous for kids. This is not something for kids or suitable for use around kids, and it's hard to believe anyone thinks it would be. What happened is horrible, but I don't see why it should mean peloton cant make their product
- wil421 6y ago
  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.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    Don’t put the gym equipment where vulnerable kids can access them, then. That’s what I do.
    - Someone1234 6y ago
      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.
      - andrew_v4 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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kepler1 6y ago
I think all bicycles should be recalled. They kill far more people, kids included, per year. And their design is ridiculous -- 2 wheels? How could such an inherently unstable device pass regulatory scrutiny?
morpheuskafka 6y ago
> The Consumer Product Safety Commission this week took the unusual step of issuing an administrative subpoena to require Peloton to disclose the name of the child who died and the family’s contact information Can't believe the company sent out an email to all of its customers announcing that incident in the first place. That kind of thing never should have left the legal department.
eximius 6y ago
A recall seems excessive. My heart goes out to the families with injuries, but children shouldn't be playing on treadmills unsupervised. Adults get hurt on treadmills all the time, the danger wouldn't be less for a child. Children get hurt on stuff. This is like those magnet toys that got banned because some kids ate them. Let's not, as a society, overreact to every little thing because the children.
- krisoft 6y ago
  > This is like those magnet toys that got banned because some kids ate them. Tiny neodymium magnets are still readily available. You wont find them labeled as toys. The problem is not that some kids ate them (that will happen with any toy containing parts small enough to be eaten) The problem is that when eaten they cause horrible internal injuries. They can cause a kid to go from “fine”, to “has a tummy ache again” to “dying in front of your eyes” relatively quickly and you can’t even diagnose what is wrong without advanced medical imaging. This property is undesireable with something marketed as a toy. How is this a societal overreaction? Let me reiterate, you are still able to buy the thing by the bucketloads they are just in the diy department not in the toy section.
  - eximius 6y ago
    So, then, how would one translate not labeling magnets as toys to these treadmills? They're already not toys. Do we recall them or change the 'label' that was already 'not for children, do not misuse'? Perhaps there need to be better warnings in the box or something. That seems like a very fine response. Recalling the machines doesn't.
_huayra_ 6y ago
Has anyone purchased a Peloton and found it useful? I'm not sure what it provides compared to a similar bike plus a tablet to watch the myriad videos on YouTube. Is it some sort of exercise status symbol to show off to their peer group (e.g. like people posting their workouts on strava)? These bikes and treadmills seem to be double the price of a similar quality machine from existing manufacturers + an ipad, so I don't understand what the draw is for these.
- 0x5f3759df-i 6y ago
  I have a DIY Peloton that I love. $500 Echelon connect sport from Walmart plus a $14 a month Peloton digital subscription (vs $40 a month if you pay more for their bike). I have to use a conversion chart for the resistance but that hardly seems worth an extra $1000 + $26 a month. Peloton really does have the best instructors but especially for the hacker new audience, you can put something together that works 95% as well for a much lower price.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    Does this still give you the "stats" aspects of Peloton (i.e. is there some power meter on that bike that connects via the Peloton digital thing)? I'm intrigued by Peloton, but after they basically said "we'll start air-freighting our incredibly heavy bikes to deal with the shipping backups", that seemed to be code for "our product has such fat margins that we can quintuple the shipping cost and still make money". This Echelon-based DIY solution seems to be good (especially for one's wallet).
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  As I understand the main goal is to be able to watch other people using it while you are using it yourself as it has a camera. I don't know I find this thing totally creepy for some reason...
- matwood 6y ago
  It's a nice bike. Probably the closest to a spin studio bike I've have ridden outside a spin studio. The instructors are top notch, and the stat tracking is a big draw. It's also easy and time efficient to use. You can go from not working to working out in a couple of minutes. I don't post my workouts anywhere, but my friends can see them. We end up chasing each others ghosts (if your friend already did the ride you can see and chase their stats as if they are real time), and it has pushed all of us quite a lot. The monthly sub is high ($40) for a single person, but it includes up to 5 accounts on the same bike. So, if you're married or have roommates it's not bad. TLDR; Peloton is the closest thing to a spin studio experience at home.
jausiejdjdid 6y ago
Negligent parents let their children play on a treadmill completely unsupervised. And of course it’s not their fault. Someone else is to blame. Recall the parents. Let Peloton keep selling treadmills.
Animats 6y ago
Pelotron's previous fiasco: pedal breakage on exercise bikes.[1] 120 pedal breaks reported to the CDC, 16 leg injuries. That's embarrassing. Pedal breakage is rare on real bikes, where weight reduction matters. Having them break on an expensive exercise bike, where neither weight nor cost matters, is a bit much. [1] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2020/peloton-recalls-pr70p-bike-pedals-due-to-laceration-hazard-recall-alert https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2020/peloton-recalls-pr70p-bike...
lancewiggs 6y ago
The biggest issue is that Peloton is resisting fast changes and instant communication to prevent further injuries. They do not deserve our trust. And given that Peloton execs clearly know about this issue, they do deserve federal and civil legal action.
steelframe 6y ago
My $600 treadmill has a magnet on a string with a clip on the other end, and the magnet has to stay stuck to a surface continually or the motors don't run. I attach the clip to my clothing so if I slip and fall while using the treadmill, it yanks the magnet away and immediately disables the machine. I keep the magnet up high enough that young kids can't get to it. Seems like that can be a reasonable way to greatly reduce the risk of injury.
illustriousbear 6y ago
Is it an American thing to vigorously defend corporations from accountability to the public? Twitter and even here seem full of people defending Peloton when clearly there have been enough incidents to warrant some design changes. It seems like a lot of people want to advocate returning to a time where businesses had little responsibility when it came to the dangerous products they churned out. There are plenty of developing countries where this is still the case and lots of people/children unnecessarily die as a result. I imagine it would be hell to live in a place where many innocuous products are dangerous and people reguarly lose their kids. I don't want to live in that world.
- reedf1 6y ago
  There will be people who will come to the defence of just about anything nowadays. I often hear people criticize the USA for its litigiousness, so I think the worry is a little overblown.
- georgemcbay 5y ago
  I think a lot of it is a kind of weird virtue signaling. Blame the parent instead of the company to show that they know what good parenting is, that sort of thing. Though also some companies/people (eg. Elon Musk) do also get a weird cult of personality thing going on that is separate from this that also tends to cause some subset of people to just blindly defend them.
casualrandomcom 6y ago
For how much the idea of a dead toddler hurts, this is such a First World Problem.
Proven 6y ago
Investigate the parents, not Peloton.

275 points by joering2 6y ago

Most treadmills have a guard or plastic covering on the bottom that stops the tread from pulling something underneath it. From pictures, the peloton treadmill doesnt have this... so I would guess if anything gets between the back of the device and the floor, it'll pull it under the machine. Edit: confirmed (warning: video shows a child being injured): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
My first instinct was to assume this to be parents doing a blame-game at Peloton for their own negligence. But this actually makes sense. A child or pet gets in there it really is game over. I can imagine even if an adult somehow slips up that it would be insanely painful and difficult to free yourself -- especially at a running pace.
- richwater 6y ago
  Why are you letting your children operate a machine with absolutely no supervision?
  - trhway 6y ago
    you don't get it - this machine is inherently dangerous even with full supervision. Check the Animats comment above.
  - WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
    Huh? I’m not doing anything. Ultimately — yes — those parents are responsible for their kid’s death here. I agree. Horrible accident. But who cares? This isn’t a political boxing match. The machine should be safer. Both can be true. Go outside..
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    What is with this obsessive victim-blaming attitude? Safety regulations are a technology, we invented them for a reason.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  If the user slips up they will pull the safety cutoff which is attached to their clothing which stops the treadmill.
  - james_pm 6y ago
    Literally nobody wears those.
    - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
      They don’t really get to complain that the machine didn’t stop when they fell if they didn’t wear the clip specifically made to stop that event. You can’t sue the bike company because you didn’t wear your helmet.
      - whyenot 6y ago
        Of course you can sue the bike company, and if your foot got caught because there was no chain guard, causing you to crash and be injured in an accident, you might even win. Even if you weren't wearing a helmet.
        aidenn0 6y ago
        My bike doesn't have a chain guard. If I don't tuck my laces before going for a ride I could possibly kill myself.
ajb 6y ago
Yikes. Sounds like they just didn't do a safety review. Given that they are also apparently "opposing" the recall, I wouldn't trust them with a 10 foot pole now. They've put themselves in the same category as the Schlitterbahn, whose water slide decapitated a 10-year-old.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Move fast and break limbs
- thathndude 6y ago
  Yeah. I can’t believe they’re opposing this. How can you defend your design after seeing this video.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    I don't think they have the ability to recall all the sold equipment. This isn't the same as recalling a car by having owners drive them to the nearest dealership for a modification/repair. They are advising customers to keep the safety key out of the device to prevent kids from using it. ...and I think that makes sense. A design change is already made on their newer models, but this sort of issue exists with any treadmill, which is why they all have safety keys.
Animats 6y ago
That's what it looks like to me, too. That's a terrible design. It's just the right height to suck a small pet under the machine and crush the animal.[1] Or a foot. Looks like Pelotron wanted a nice clean look, so they left the guards off. That looked nice in the Jetsons series in 1962.[1] But not in real life. In industry, this is called an unguarded pinch point. Classic cause of injuries and amputations. It's an OSHA violation in an industrial operation. Every other treadmill I've ever seen had substantial guarding around the pinch points. OSHA: "1910.211(d)(44): 'Pinch point' means any point other than the point of operation at which it is possible for a part of the body to be caught between the moving parts of a press or auxiliary equipment, or between moving and stationary parts of a press or auxiliary equipment or between the material and moving part or parts of the press or auxiliary equipment." [1] https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1eJfm0.img https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1e... [2] https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=82 https://youtu.be/0JQbeCAlF6s?t=82
- thedrbrian 6y ago
  Kinda surprised they didn’t add a weight sensor on the legs so that when something is pulled under and it lifts the base it cuts the power.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Photoelectric safety switch between the back legs would’ve also worked (like a garage door beam), depending on how sturdy those legs are mounted for alignment.
    - jturpin 6y ago
      I was thinking this as well. For how much tech this thing seems to have, and for such a high price tag, they could easily justify putting, I don't know, two or three IR sensors down there.
      - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
        These all introduce failure points for the product. Bit of dust floats under the treadmill and now it’s not working and you have an angry customer.
sgpl 6y ago
Warning for others clicking on the link, it's pretty graphic and appears to be a video of an actual incident with the treadmill. I was expecting it to be a product demo video or something.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Yes thankfully I clicked away but that really needs a warning.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    The video has a warning.
    - rgbrenner 6y ago
      I believe he posted this right before I updated the post to add the warning. Thanks to everyone that pointed it out.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - crooked-v 6y ago
      It has a warning now. It didn't at first.
      - robtaylor 6y ago
        the first five seconds of the video has warning text
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  For the people who stopped watching halfway through: thankfully the child survives at the end.
  - 6y ago
foepys 6y ago
This looks like a typical startup disruption approach where they wanted to build the hardware from the ground up and didn't ask industry experts why something is done the way it is.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Reviewing profiles of Peloton mechanical engineers suggests they employ experts, including from heavily regulated industries. It seems unlikely that this was built without discussion or research. However, it’s true that they misjudged the risk here.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    In this case wouldn't it be a cultural thing for the management rather than the engineers? They're both human, but if the boss says get it done or get out, the standard is set from the top.
    - 1123581321 6y ago
      Certainly. It would be comforting, as an engineer myself, to think that management must not have considered the problem. However, the truth is that management, design and engineering are all quite capable of trying to avoid problems, potentially to great lengths, and failing anyway.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    They may employ experts, but that's a different thing entirely from listening to them.
- rconti 6y ago
  I'm not sure how this speculation adds to the conversation, though.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
baybal2 6y ago
Any treadmill I've seen had a sensor which shuts down the mill if the tread gets jammed.
- soneil 6y ago
  I think that's really the damning bit - in the video shown, you can see ripples in the belt still moving towards the kid just after the sister runs off. The belt's jammed, the user's dismounted, and it's still trying to win.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    At some point the treadmill actually spits the kid out. It reverses the speed for like one, two seconds when the kid was jammed and everything had stopped, but then it starts going back in its original direction and the kid gets sucked back in before he has time to get clear.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  Yeah the Peloton does detect itself getting jammed. You can see it automatically start running backwards to unjam itself in the video, then start running forward again. Crazy to think that someone thought that was a good idea.
userbinator 6y ago
Perhaps "most" is an exaggeration, since I have one which doesn't and the comments here and images found online suggest that many others don't. IMHO that video shows negligence on the part of the parents. There was a camera there but no physical presence. Exercise equipment is dangerous if not used correctly, and although I'm one who doesn't believe in "helicopter parenting", I certainly wouldn't let my kid play with a treadmill with only a camera watching.
js2 6y ago
My True 500 had nothing to prevent something from being pulled under it. Landice makes high end residential treadmills and their models don’t appear to either: https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/90%20SERIES_SERVICE_MANUAL.pdf https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/90%20SERIES_SERV... However, compared to those treadmills, the Peloton Tread+ has much larger diameter rollers and step-up height. It's also much heavier (455 lbs vs 340 lbs). It looks uniquely dangerous to me among residential treadmills. Landice L7 and L8: https://cdn.sweatband.com/Landice_L9_Club_Pro_Sports_Trainer_Treadmill_3_2000x2000.jpg https://cdn.sweatband.com/Landice_L9_Club_Pro_Sports_Trainer... Peloton Tread+: https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https:%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2Feditorial%2Fimages%2F621877%2Fpton-stock-peloton-stock-peloton-treadmill-recall-safety-cpsc-child-dies.jpg&w=700 https://g.foolcdn.com/image/?url=https:%2F%2Fg.foolcdn.com%2...
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing these pictures. They clearly show the difference in height. The Landice can be a threat for a pet or can grab/scratch a foot. The Peloton clearly/visible is higher and a small child can sneak or can be pulled under it.
- trhway 6y ago
  on the page 90 there is visible a crossbar which prevents from pulling in under. You can also see it here https://www.treadmillreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Landice-L7-Treadmill-1.png https://www.treadmillreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/... Most threadmills have it, and it is hard to imagine why a one wouldn't have it.
  - js2 6y ago
    Landice calls them deck slats and they are structural members that hold the two halves of the treadmill together. You can see that clearly on page 4 here: https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/Install%20TreadBelt%2C%20Deck%20%26%20Impact%20Absorbers.pdf https://www.landice.com/sites/default/files/Install%20TreadB... (Aside, but I love that Landice puts their excellent technical documentation online.) If they also serve a safety purpose, great. (My True has these too, but there's about 2-3" between the horizontal bar and the belt.) The Peloton Tread+ must have the horizontal structural cross-members inside the belt. They'd have to make the side rails taller to accommodate a safety bar: https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035933551-Slat-Belt-Sagging-Underneath-The-Tread- https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/articles/36003593355...
rconti 6y ago
Yes, the video confirms what I expected from the description. And yeah, the video is a bit gruesome but apparently he was okay. We have a Peloton Treadmill (now called the Tread+, but the original one is the same as the Tread+), in fact my wife is running on it right now. If you do a Google Image Search for "treadmill", you will see most treadmills are belt-style, and often have a metal bar underneath the back, a few inches in. NOT a cover on the back -- the plastic cover is typically on the FRONT of most treadmills, which won't help with things getting sucked underneath at the back, which is where this would happen. The Tread+ is a "slat style" treadmill similar to something really high end like a $10k+ Woodway, but other brands also sell slatted style treadmills. It's definitely obvious how something can get sucked under the back of the tread, however I'm not sure how much better having a protective bar is; I really wouldn't want an arm to get sucked between the belt and a protective bar underneath, which is usually at least a few inches from the underside of the belt. And of course the Tread+ is something like 450lbs; the heavier the treadmill, the more problematic something like this is likely to be. Having it shut off when something goes under it does't really help; I'm not sure I'd want my kid to get crushed by a stationary treadmill either. Like most treadmills, the Tread has a safety key which you're supposed to wear (but not everyone does, and of course kids playing on it are not going to). Actually, I just realized the obvious answer is, if you have kids, take the safety key off when you're not using it. But, mistakes happen, and of course something can also get sucked under when a properly trained adult is using the device as well. (One of our cats took a serious blow to the head from the swinging arm of our elliptical, but he was fine; cat.) I definitely wouldn't want anything going under the pedals of our Peloton bike either; metal pedal plus speed plus flywheel mass would be a REALLY bad time. Back to the Tread, the belt stops if there's no weight on it for "a while" but I'm not sure how long; certainly it takes more than 10 seconds. And, again, you'd be left with a kid trapped under a STOPPED treadmill which is not much better. There's no particular safety for turning it on. Typically I select my profile on the touchscreen but the knobs on the side to start the belt are active before starting a class. I think they might even be active when the tablet is "on" (tap the power button on the cross bar first) but before choosing a profile. I suppose a workaround would be to require a login before turning it on, but of course this is a step most other treadmills don't have either.
- avianlyric 6y ago
thathndude 6y ago
Holy sh!t. This is indefensible. That Peloton is even trying to defend itself is asinine. They need to pull this product ASAP.
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avianlyric 6y ago
What I find most amazing in that video is that the treadmill stalls, detects an error condition, reverses for a second, then immediately goes full pelt forward again. It’s crazy to think the treadmill has the ability to detect a potentially dangerous situation (the belt is completely jammed). But instead of shutting down, it does everything it can to keep operating and doing as much damage as possible. Peloton didn’t need to add extra guards or sensors, they just needed someone to program the damn thing to shutdown when it jams. Rather than programming it with some dangerous and stupid auto-unjam sequence.
- herpderperator 6y ago
  > Peloton didn't need to add extra guards or sensors, they just needed... This is a very naive comment. Substantial damage can be caused prior to the system detecting an error condition; this is no excuse for not having guards.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  The good news with this is that they can deploy software updates with their treadmills, so they'll likely fix this.
  - biofox 6y ago
    I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not, but software should never be used to compensate for unsafe hardware. That lesson should have become standard knowledge after the Therac-25 disaster, which happened as a result of replacing a hardware interlock with a software one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Software is used to make hardware safe all the time. Look in any factory with automation and you’ll find hundreds Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) running safety critical operations, and acting as interlocks. Look inside a car, and you can find a dozen software based systems designed to make the hardware safer. E.g. Traction control, body stability systems, ABS breaking, software that decides which airbags fire in a collision, lane departure computer vision systems, air pressure alerts, engine control systems that look for unsafe operating conditions etc etc Ultimately software can be made safe. Long and rigorous software development processes and audit process are what makes it safe. Ultimately there’s nothing inherently safer about hardware safety systems, they’re engineered and suffer from human error. Proper risk assessments are always required, and safety systems should be built to match the risk. There’s no one size fits all’s. In Pelotons case, they clearly failed to assess and address the risk properly.
ljm 6y ago
Treadmills aren't child-friendly machines either, so why is this video showing two children messing around with the machine without any supervision?
js2 6y ago
I just watched the video. Every treadmill I’m familiar with has a safety key attached to a lanyard that the runner is supposed to attach to their waist band that immediacy pulls the key and deactivates the treadmill if the runner falls. I don’t know how this treadmill is still operating after the older child gets off. Maybe the key was left in place and the treadmill left turned on but that’s really f’ing dangerous. A modern treadmill should reset itself after a period of non-use and require the key to be removed and re-inserted. That’s in addition to a physical safety guard under the belt this treadmill clearly should have (see my post elsewhere in this thread comparing the size of the Peloton to another premium residential brand). This Peloton is a death machine. I didn’t realize the CSPC doesn’t have the regulatory authority to force a recall. ETA: just learned yet another thing. It’s really hard to physically reach the switch to turn it off. The switch is located under the treadmill. Wtf. See the 8 minute mark of this video: https://youtu.be/McgwmLkYJPc https://youtu.be/McgwmLkYJPc
- bikeshaving 6y ago
  I was a child once. I have distinct memories of playing with treadmills. Turning them on while sitting on them. Running Hot Wheels Cars on them while they’re running. The design of these treadmills is pure negligence regardless of safety keys or kill switches.
  - js2 6y ago
    There are advantages to large rollers, a high deck and a heavy chassis. But these are all things that make this a more dangerous machine that other residential treadmills. Peloton should reduce that risk with a physical barrier under the deck. But even with that, this treadmill should still have a safety key and an accessible (for an adult) physical on/off switch.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  These treadmills also have safety keys. The mom in these cases, is leaving them in. Definitely some changes Peloton can make though.
BrissyCoder 6y ago
This is truly terrible design and I hope the machines are recalled... but there is more than a little onus on the parents here (at least in case of the linked video - can't speak to the other incidents). If you are responsible for children that age you should be actively evaluating your home for these types of risks. Letting them play on a piece of machinery like that unsupervised is neglect imo. From the time the little girl notices something is wrong (and is presumably and making a lot of noise) there is still no adult visible after a full 35 seconds has elapsed.
anfilt 6y ago
I have seen lots of trade mills without a guard there. Just googling image shows quite a few that don't have a guard there. If the issue is the guard it's more than just peloton that then needs to revise their design. What I do find more interesting is how the treadmill is still running even after the other kid gets off. There is a reason a lot treadmills have lanyard that shuts it off.
throwaway189262 6y ago
I don't understand how they released it like that. When my mom told me about kids getting stuck I immediately said "yeah under the back right?" And I've only seen Peloton in ads. What a stupid design. They deserve to get sued into oblivion
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benatkin 6y ago

This messes up my view of the whole company, as well as my afternoon. I was just starting to get interested in Peloton but since I hadn't gotten into it, it's easy to drop the idea. I hope their reasoning isn't that a child shouldn't have used it. Kids love video games. They need to figure out how to minimize the risk in addition to doing all they can to prevent kids from using it.

yuliyp 6y ago
Sadly that's exactly their reasoning: "The Peloton Tread+ is safe for use at home when operated as directed and in accordance with our warnings and safety instructions"
- ohazi 6y ago
  One of the lessons you're eventually supposed to learn when designing consumer products is that you don't get to decide what "used correctly" means. If, in actual use, some people are leaving the key in the treadmill, then just having the key and two sentences in the manual isn't going to be considered an adequate substitute for having a tread guard. "But they didn't read the manual!" isn't going to absolve them of liability either.
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    I think the question of “should the design have prevented this?” Would factor in. If someone doesn’t clip the safety cord to themselves and then trips and the machine keeps running and injures them, the only possible way to stop this kind of event is with a safety clip which was already provided and the user chose to not use.
    - deleted 6y ago
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    - omnicognate 6y ago
      If you do a google images search for "running treadmill" you'll see most of them have some design aspect that would prevent the accident shown in the video, most commonly a bar or guard of some sort that would stop a child or large object being dragged under. Edit: in case you haven't seen the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXNnlCYJ4Y

ohazi 6y ago

> Asked for a response, a spokesperson for Peloton, Jessica Kleiman, told Insider that the company was "disappointed that CPSC is mischaracterizing the situation." The hubris... The only correct response would have been something along the lines of "we have no comment at this time." The job is to communicate that you are aware of an issue, that you are investigating, and/or that you are cooperating. If you want to lobby for favorable treatment from regulators, hire an external lobbying firm to do it quietly, don't get into a public flame war with the CPSC. How are PR/spokespeople for high profile companies still making these kind of amateur hour mistakes in 2021? Isn't the public record absolutely littered with comments like these that just made the company look worse?

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whatshisface 6y ago
Most people aren't as Machiavellian as your typical armchair industry analyst would suppose. If you accuse a board that their product is killing children, would you expect them to think "we better make sure our PR department covers this up as effectively as possible," or would you expect indignation and denial?
- deleted 6y ago
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- oivey 6y ago
  I would expect “we’re investigating this issue and/or taking corrective action” because that’s the actually empathetic thing to do when a child has died and others have been injured. No PR department should be putting out knee jerk reactions. It’s their job not to. That their reaction is to deflect blame doesn’t bode well for them making an effort to address the problem. Peloton is not even just deflecting blame here. They are accusing the government of basically lying.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago

loonster 6y ago

The level of risk is magnitudes more with the waterslide. Allowing children to use exercise equipment is a Darwin award for the parents. It is just below allowing them to use power tools unsupervised

ihumanable 6y ago
Go read the actual urgent warning from the CPSC https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-Consumers-Stop-Using-the-Peloton-Tread https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-... > 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. This isn't a case of user-negligence, this is an inherently unsafe design where Peloton decided not to put a guard on the back of the machine.
- loonster 6y ago
  In my mind, it is in the same category as a power tool. A parent would be an idiot to use a circular saw near a young child. Using a treadmill near children is stupid. Bad things happen when people do stupid stuff.
  - wpietri 6y ago
    Nah. The key difference is that power tools are supposed to reshape matter. Like knives, circular saws are inherently dangerous. This is more like a fan: some designs are very dangerous, but it's possible to design versions that are both effective and reasonably safe.
    - loonster 6y ago
      Its essentially a giant belt sander. Some belt Sanders are more dangerous than others. I have a toddler in my household. Even thinking of them playing around any treadmill gives me an anxiety attack. If you want a household item, it's like a stand mixer. Something that could break bones if not worse.

fmakunbound 6y ago

I need a key to start my Sole, and you can attach the key to yourself while operating it (in case you fall off). A child getting mangled under the tread couldn’t have happened with that simple mechanism in place.

tigershark 6y ago
In the video that another user posted the treadmill was already running because the sister was using it and the little child was sucked inside. How the key would have helped in this situation?
- phnofive 6y ago
  The children were playing with it unsupervised - presumably this is why there was a camera trained on them, but no one was actually watching.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    Substitute the girl using the treadmill with one of the parents. The kid with the ball still gets caught, although the treadmill could get stopped sooner. Unless supervision means the child never gets further away from the supervising adult's arm's reach, I think the only thing you can do is fence off the treadmill to keep free range kids and pets away.
    - g00gler 6y ago
      > Substitute the girl using the treadmill with one of the parents. The kid with the ball still gets caught, although the treadmill could get stopped sooner. Doesn’t seem likely. His parent would either fall because the treadmill slowed down, running into him and injuring them both or they would have told them to stop it because it’s clearly dangerous
- bdibs 6y ago
  As soon as the girl got off instead of continuing to drag the child under it, it would have stopped. It probably wouldn't have completely stopped it from happening but it certainly would have improved the outcome.

roland35 6y ago

I have a hard time believing that there aren't very specific regulations for threadmills that address hazards. When I worked on a consumer robotics project we had to follow IEC standards which defined exactly how far a hand could reach to moving parts, how big a stop button must be, etc.

mapt 6y ago
I'm finding an ASTM spec - https://www.astm.org/Standards/F2115.htm https://www.astm.org/Standards/F2115.htm And an ISO spec - https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:20957:-6:ed-1:v1:en https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:20957:-6:ed-1:v1:en But no indication if anybody's bothered to regulate that with force of law. I know we regulate safety in some areas pre-emptively, like transportation law through SAE standards, but also that the US relies a lot more on after-the-fact liability precedents and "self-regulation" than somewhere like the EU, which has preemptive standards like CE marking. You'll note the headline language: "Regulators urge recall". I don't know that this would even be a thing in a lot of places - the company has an option?
- jsmith45 6y ago
  The company has the option of doing it voluntarily, or the regulator can start the process of forcing a recall. Obviously there is less red tape required to formally ask a company to consider a recall then there is in issuing an involuntary one. And yeah, there frequently are not legally binding regulations in many areas of product safety, because the CPSC is required to defer to industry creating its own voluntary standards. Only if the industry refuses to create good enough voluntary standards, or too many companies fail to comply and create safety issues can the CPSC create mandatory standards. Other regulators may not be as constrained here, but there is still a general culture of “government telling us what to do”=bad, so better for industries to get together and tell themselves what to do. Industry created standards can often update faster to changes in the risk landscape than bureaucrats can anyway.

moneytide1 6y ago

It's more alarming that people are spending this amount of money (aka deploying factory labor, conveyor belts, induction motors, plastic molding, heart rate screens, grid electricity) for the ability to run in place like a hamster.

Bancakes 6y ago
You get to run in a clean, climate controlled environment with near zero risk of body injury. Plus with all the covid lockdowns, this is one of the best cardio you can get.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Is the treadmill not bad for your knees? (Obviously not as bad as concrete I guess but you get the point). I think rowing is some of the best cardio you can get, although I may be biased as a former rower
  - jedberg 6y ago
    Rowing is only slightly better for your knees than running. If you are worried about knees, swimming is the best cardio, because it puts almost no strain on your joints.
    - _huayra_ 6y ago
      Rowing is a lot closer to swimming than running, primarily because the load on your joints is dictated by the output of your muscles, whereas in running the load is primarily impacted by each of the small "falls back to Earth" you do with each step. That's not to say that improper rowing cannot cause injury, but the correct technique for rowing alleviates all of the injury-causing jolts to your joints that occur with each stride in running.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      I took up fencing after I stopped rowing, which is apparently even worse, so maybe just do the opposite of whatever I say

varispeed 6y ago

If this was a small company, wouldn't regulator simply shut it down?

jdavis703 6y ago

What I’m not understanding, how is a Peloton more dangerous than a regular treadmill?

gruez 6y ago
from an earlier thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846861
dkdk8283 6y ago
Normal treadmills have a safety limit switch that disengages the motor when it senses an obstruction. Many years ago I was at the gym and a exercise ball got loose, jammed it up, and the guy fell off. After removing the ball the treadmill didn’t resume operation. You can see in the video the peloton jogs the motor in an attempt to free the obstruction. I presume the initial feature is to unjam a off track belt.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Is that not required by law? Surely the engineers thought about this scenario and advised management to include a safety limit switch. Did management just ignore the engineers? This seems like another Ford Pinto where the company decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than fix the product.
  - bdibs 6y ago
    "Move fast and break things." Edit: I didn’t mean to offend, or to be morbid. I was making a point about how that particular mindset often doesn’t lead to products that care about “boring” things like safety or long term reliability.
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    I fear that some engineer(s) probably said at some point: what if a puppy/toddler is grabbed/pinched/pulled underneath? At which moment the product director got a mini heart-attack, sensed his/her bonus was at stake, and immediately asked the engineer(s) to be transferred to other projects. I have a favorie Dilbert for such cases: https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-04-10 "Not a team player"

dang 6y ago

Url changed from https://www.businessinsider.com/regulators-urge-safety-recall-of-peloton-treadmill-after-child-dies-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/regulators-urge-safety-recal..., which points to this.

treeman79 6y ago

Was like 12. Speed was set via a dial. One would think a treadmill needed ramp up time to get to 15mph. Life lessons were learned after being tossed into a filing cabinet.

jamiek88 6y ago
I would deffo have died as a kid if our treadmill had this design. I was forever fucking around with it including the flung into the China cabinet lesson. Ever seen what happens if you throw a medicine ball onto a running treadmill at 15 mph with max incline? Well what happens is the ball nearly decapitates your little brother before exploding through a window and then your arse gets tanned by your dads belt. Same happens if you decide to see what’s inside your etch a sketch with an axe. At the kitchen table. I’m amazed I neither killed myself nor was killed by my parents.
- christophilus 6y ago
  As a relatively new dad, you just gave me heart palpitations.

ajb 6y ago

When my parents were children, everyone heated their houses with an open fire, and if you did something wrong on any day it would kill you. When I was a child, we had a boiler which was perfectly safe so long as you paid someone to service it once a year. Pretty much all the things my parents grew up with had no safety features, pretty much all the things I grew up with did. We have moved to a society where things are expected to be safe except for a number of well known exceptions, and this is good: "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments. " Alfred North Whitehead As technologists it is our business to know and understand the consequences of the mechanisms we build. We value greater understanding and perception. But it is a mistake to project this value system onto society as a whole, since, as the quote shows, the worth of what we build is precisely to allow others to avoid this burden. That applies in safety as much as anything else. As technologists we can see that if a device has a 500W motor in it , it bears thinking about whether there are any safety issues. But consumers rightly expect any safety issues to be pointed out to them. What worries me is when companies are run by people who don't understand that all our safety is the result of a lot of work, and so don't realise the amount of diligence required.

donw 6y ago
Yes and no. Peleton should redesign the treadmill. It is needlessly hazardous, and a few small changes could easily remedy the problem without compromising the envelope of functionality for the device. But: I absolutely hate modern appliances with egregious safety buffers, as to reduce their functional envelope down to precisely what the designers imagined, and nothing more. Also, and I realize this is an unpopular stance: Danger is important for children. I'm not suggesting that we need to start giving kids industrial metal saws or machine guns as soon as they can walk, but we do need to stop hiding them from the world. Kids need to learn how to live their lives, and that means getting hurt and learning from it. Our job as engineers is, within the above limits, to try and keep those lessons from being lethal, disfiguring, or crippling.

wruza 6y ago

Four IR sensors on a perimeter below the tread should do the job (interrupt the beam and it stops). Idk how companies come up with such non-safe products, even without regulation. It’s just a common sense to add some trivial safety to mechanisms.

aaron695 6y ago

I really hope most of the commentators here never get positions of responsibility. Few comments are questioning why "Peloton" or are just making stuff up, like missing guards. ~3 people die a year from treadmills in the USA. "In 2009, former boxer Mike Tyson’s daughter died when she got caught in a cord from a treadmill and accidentally hung herself" > One of those fatalities involved a 5-year-old child, but it was not clear what occurred in that case This is not hard to find - "Ashim Gurung died of compression of the neck, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office determined." "at least 2,600 children a year land in the emergency room from treadmills alone, according to Kim Dulic" " in 2001, 12 children in separate incidents in Philadelphia suffered injuries from treadmill accidents. Six of them got their hands caught in the belts and suffered abrasions and resulting scar tissue so severe that they required plastic surgery to just to be able to open their hands again." So why Peloton other than it's hip to say bad things about Peloton? Is that the value of that child's life, not to learn, but to be hip?

dragonwriter 6y ago
> So why Peloton other than it's hip to say bad things about Peloton? Because Peloton, unlike other treadmill manufacturers for which CPSC has recommended a recall and published safety guidance, opposes the recall and the safety guidance. There have been lots of safety recalls for treadmills and similar fitness gear (which is probably an indicator that more up-front regulation is needed), but manufacturers publicly rejecting recalls and safety guidance after large groups of injuries (including a fatality) is a different story.

bigmattystyles 6y ago

If all they can do is urge a recall, I don’t know if they should be called regulators.

dragonwriter 6y ago
They are called regulators because they can, among other mandatory powers, establish mandatory standards for products and ban product categories. Outside of the areas where they can and have done that, they also can recommend recalls that are voluntary, and publish consumer guidance.
jsmith45 6y ago
The CPSC can initiate Involuntary recalls, but they always try to negotiate voluntary recalls first. Involuntary recalls always get right leaning individuals to start screening about governmental overreach, and to start looking at how to kill off the the CPSC. So it is very much preferred to try to get companies to agree to voluntary recalls. As a result of that, and the additional red tape needed to issue an involuntary recall, the latter are very infrequent. Normally, this is in the company’s interests too, since refusing to issue a suggested recall can make the company look bad too, since it can look like the company not taking safety seriously. On the pure regulatory side, the CPSC can issue safety standards, but basically has to give industry a chance to first develop voluntary safety standards. If the industry does so, and the CPSC believes compliance will be high enough, then it cannot create its own standard. Thieve is an implication that if the industry created standard is good enough, but companies don’t comply, the CPSC should create a mandatory standard that requires products provide safety equivalent or better then said voluntary standard. Only when industry refuses to create standards sufficient to address safety concerns is the CPSC supposed to create its own out of whole cloth. Obviously, just the threat of doing so frequently gets the industry to create or update its own voluntary standards.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

Seems everybody who reads this headline instantaneously becomes an expert in the safe design of exercise equipment.

wdn 6y ago

Probably not popular opinion: Where were the parents in the video? This is an adult gym equipment and it is not a toy. Why would regulator recall this? For example, I am helping my son with weight training. I spot him. I never allow him to do it himself as he simply unable to control his strength yet. If he get hurt doing bench press himself for using too much weight without a spotter, is this the manufacturer’s problem or is it my problem? Of course it is my own negligence problem.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> This is an adult gym equipment and it is not a toy. Why would regulator recall this? Because there are indications that it is unnecessarily unsafe in hine use, particularly to children and potentially to users. Also, the CPSC isn’t recalling it, though they are recommending that Peloton should. They are advising consumers not to use it in hones with children, or, if they must use it in those conditions, to take a set of risk mitigation measures. https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-Consumers-Stop-Using-the-Peloton-Tread https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Warns-...
js2 6y ago
Other brands of residential treadmill do not cause injuries at the same rate and are not nearly as dangerous. I am a runner and have a lot of experience with treadmills. This treadmill has some features that make it uniquely dangerous: - Large rollers (2x to 4x the diameter of other residential treadmills). - Higher deck height. - An inconvenient to access physical on/off switch, increasing the likelihood it will be left on. - Apparently no safety lanyard. - No guard under the belt. This is not common to residential treadmills in my experience, but is not as necessary without the larger rollers and higher deck height. The comparison to free weights is not apt. This treadmill can easily be made safer with better design decisions. If the bench broke under your son due to negligent design, I wouldn't hold you responsible, but rather the bench manufacturer.
- js2 6y ago
  I can't edit my comment above at this point, but it does have a safety key/lanyard: https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/360089898972/Peloton_Tread_Plus_User_Manual.pdf https://support.onepeloton.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/...

andrew_v4 6y ago

I've read a lot of the comments here condemning Peloton, and I don't think I completely agree. A treadmill is a big fast moving piece of gym equipment. It is definitely dangerous to kids, as are all treadmills. And what about like freeweights or those universal gyms with the plates that go up and down? What about power tools? Or vacuum cleaners? Or plastic bags, or cleaning products, or whatever? Lots of stuff is dangerous for kids. This is not something for kids or suitable for use around kids, and it's hard to believe anyone thinks it would be. What happened is horrible, but I don't see why it should mean peloton cant make their product

wil421 6y ago
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.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  Don’t put the gym equipment where vulnerable kids can access them, then. That’s what I do.
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    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.
    - andrew_v4 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kepler1 6y ago

I think all bicycles should be recalled. They kill far more people, kids included, per year. And their design is ridiculous -- 2 wheels? How could such an inherently unstable device pass regulatory scrutiny?

morpheuskafka 6y ago

> The Consumer Product Safety Commission this week took the unusual step of issuing an administrative subpoena to require Peloton to disclose the name of the child who died and the family’s contact information Can't believe the company sent out an email to all of its customers announcing that incident in the first place. That kind of thing never should have left the legal department.

eximius 6y ago

A recall seems excessive. My heart goes out to the families with injuries, but children shouldn't be playing on treadmills unsupervised. Adults get hurt on treadmills all the time, the danger wouldn't be less for a child. Children get hurt on stuff. This is like those magnet toys that got banned because some kids ate them. Let's not, as a society, overreact to every little thing because the children.

krisoft 6y ago
> This is like those magnet toys that got banned because some kids ate them. Tiny neodymium magnets are still readily available. You wont find them labeled as toys. The problem is not that some kids ate them (that will happen with any toy containing parts small enough to be eaten) The problem is that when eaten they cause horrible internal injuries. They can cause a kid to go from “fine”, to “has a tummy ache again” to “dying in front of your eyes” relatively quickly and you can’t even diagnose what is wrong without advanced medical imaging. This property is undesireable with something marketed as a toy. How is this a societal overreaction? Let me reiterate, you are still able to buy the thing by the bucketloads they are just in the diy department not in the toy section.
- eximius 6y ago
  So, then, how would one translate not labeling magnets as toys to these treadmills? They're already not toys. Do we recall them or change the 'label' that was already 'not for children, do not misuse'? Perhaps there need to be better warnings in the box or something. That seems like a very fine response. Recalling the machines doesn't.

_huayra_ 6y ago

Has anyone purchased a Peloton and found it useful? I'm not sure what it provides compared to a similar bike plus a tablet to watch the myriad videos on YouTube. Is it some sort of exercise status symbol to show off to their peer group (e.g. like people posting their workouts on strava)? These bikes and treadmills seem to be double the price of a similar quality machine from existing manufacturers + an ipad, so I don't understand what the draw is for these.

0x5f3759df-i 6y ago
I have a DIY Peloton that I love. $500 Echelon connect sport from Walmart plus a $14 a month Peloton digital subscription (vs $40 a month if you pay more for their bike). I have to use a conversion chart for the resistance but that hardly seems worth an extra $1000 + $26 a month. Peloton really does have the best instructors but especially for the hacker new audience, you can put something together that works 95% as well for a much lower price.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  Does this still give you the "stats" aspects of Peloton (i.e. is there some power meter on that bike that connects via the Peloton digital thing)? I'm intrigued by Peloton, but after they basically said "we'll start air-freighting our incredibly heavy bikes to deal with the shipping backups", that seemed to be code for "our product has such fat margins that we can quintuple the shipping cost and still make money". This Echelon-based DIY solution seems to be good (especially for one's wallet).
intricatedetail 6y ago
As I understand the main goal is to be able to watch other people using it while you are using it yourself as it has a camera. I don't know I find this thing totally creepy for some reason...
matwood 6y ago
It's a nice bike. Probably the closest to a spin studio bike I've have ridden outside a spin studio. The instructors are top notch, and the stat tracking is a big draw. It's also easy and time efficient to use. You can go from not working to working out in a couple of minutes. I don't post my workouts anywhere, but my friends can see them. We end up chasing each others ghosts (if your friend already did the ride you can see and chase their stats as if they are real time), and it has pushed all of us quite a lot. The monthly sub is high ($40) for a single person, but it includes up to 5 accounts on the same bike. So, if you're married or have roommates it's not bad. TLDR; Peloton is the closest thing to a spin studio experience at home.

jausiejdjdid 6y ago

Negligent parents let their children play on a treadmill completely unsupervised. And of course it’s not their fault. Someone else is to blame. Recall the parents. Let Peloton keep selling treadmills.

Animats 6y ago

Pelotron's previous fiasco: pedal breakage on exercise bikes.[1] 120 pedal breaks reported to the CDC, 16 leg injuries. That's embarrassing. Pedal breakage is rare on real bikes, where weight reduction matters. Having them break on an expensive exercise bike, where neither weight nor cost matters, is a bit much. [1] https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2020/peloton-recalls-pr70p-bike-pedals-due-to-laceration-hazard-recall-alert https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2020/peloton-recalls-pr70p-bike...

lancewiggs 6y ago

The biggest issue is that Peloton is resisting fast changes and instant communication to prevent further injuries. They do not deserve our trust. And given that Peloton execs clearly know about this issue, they do deserve federal and civil legal action.

steelframe 6y ago

My $600 treadmill has a magnet on a string with a clip on the other end, and the magnet has to stay stuck to a surface continually or the motors don't run. I attach the clip to my clothing so if I slip and fall while using the treadmill, it yanks the magnet away and immediately disables the machine. I keep the magnet up high enough that young kids can't get to it. Seems like that can be a reasonable way to greatly reduce the risk of injury.

illustriousbear 6y ago

Is it an American thing to vigorously defend corporations from accountability to the public? Twitter and even here seem full of people defending Peloton when clearly there have been enough incidents to warrant some design changes. It seems like a lot of people want to advocate returning to a time where businesses had little responsibility when it came to the dangerous products they churned out. There are plenty of developing countries where this is still the case and lots of people/children unnecessarily die as a result. I imagine it would be hell to live in a place where many innocuous products are dangerous and people reguarly lose their kids. I don't want to live in that world.

reedf1 6y ago
There will be people who will come to the defence of just about anything nowadays. I often hear people criticize the USA for its litigiousness, so I think the worry is a little overblown.
georgemcbay 5y ago
I think a lot of it is a kind of weird virtue signaling. Blame the parent instead of the company to show that they know what good parenting is, that sort of thing. Though also some companies/people (eg. Elon Musk) do also get a weird cult of personality thing going on that is separate from this that also tends to cause some subset of people to just blindly defend them.

casualrandomcom 6y ago

For how much the idea of a dead toddler hurts, this is such a First World Problem.

Proven 6y ago

Investigate the parents, not Peloton.