SAFETY 1ST Kids’ Safet y Accessories
- Thread starter ericmark
- Start date
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Exactly. As I said, one cannot really expect the likes of Lidl to have competence to judge the safety (or even 'worth') of everything they sell. If one wanted to prevent these things being sold, one would have to 'ban' them and then police that ban rigorously so as to cut off importation and the supply to retailers.
Kind Regards, John
I was in a local church hall recently doing SFx for a play rehearsal and noticed they had these iniquitous things in all the sockets. I removed one to show someone what the problem with them was. I was very surprised to see that the 13A sockets had shutters with chamfers/flutes on them that enabled them to be pushed aside by pushing an object into the L or N aperture without requiring a Earth pin to be inserted! I'd have thought such accessories coul dnot be sold as they woul dnot comply with the standard?!
MK ones are like this BUT you need 2 such objects as L & N have to be operated together to get them to open. It is actually very difficult without 2 13A pin size objects.
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Well stap me so they are! I have all Logic-plus at home but I've never looked closely at them - just tried it and you're right.
They might well have been MK - I didn't really look that hard.
people slag them off, but im sure they could of prevented some of the incidents involving poorly discarded cut off moulded plugs
Indeed. Whenever we get involved in debates with the 'anti' campaigners, I usually get in trouble for pointing out that they are presenting a very one-sided, hence biased, picture. It is clearly a balance between 'doing good' and 'doing harm' - and I'm sure there are cases of both. They are very quick to present anecdotes and videos of infants/children who have 'nearly come to grief' as a result of these products (despite challenges, they have yet to be able to tell me of any proven cases of children/infants who have actually come to harm), they do, of course, never mention those cases in which infants/children have "nearly (or actually) come to harm" as a result of an exposed socket, in which case the product might well have prevented the near (or actual) disaster.
I certainly don't advocate the use of these things, primarily (as per the RoSPA recommendation cited above) because they are essentially not really 'necessary', but I have yet to see any decent evidence which tells me whether, when they are used, they result in a net increase or a net decrease in hazardous incidents. The fact that they have the potential to do harm certainly does not prove that they do not do net good!
Kind Regards, John
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Yes written to Lidi will post any reply. I also considered they did no harm until at the doctors surgery I saw a child playing with one trying to plug it into the socket. The mother also saw and stopped the child so no harm, but pointed out how children do play. I remember watching my grand daughter with a set of keys trying them in the car lock it seems it is natural for children to try to poke things into holes.
Clearly they could do the same with any plug, but plugs don't flex in the same way. The problem is without BS 1363 being complied with these items can be under or over size and as a result damage sockets or part fall out. I take the attitude unless marked BS 1363 they should not be fitted in sockets.
Clearly they could do the same with any plug, but plugs don't flex in the same way. The problem is without BS 1363 being complied with these items can be under or over size and as a result damage sockets or part fall out. I take the attitude unless marked BS 1363 they should not be fitted in sockets.
A reasonable view, although I rather doubt that BS1363 covers such (non-electrical) items, so it would probably be impossible for them to be (or be marked as) BS1363-compliant.
What I don't understand is why some of the manufacturers make these products with pins that do not correspond to the dimensions of BS1363-compliant plugs. They presumably can read BS1363 as well as can you and I, and could presumably manufacture products with dimensions per BS1363-compliant plugs just as easily as ones with slightly different dimensions.
Kind Regards, John
As I wrote 3 or 4 posts back, not that we've seen. As I said, the 'anti' campaigners present anecdotes and videos of children who have 'nearly come to grief' as a result of these products, but despite questions from me, they have yet to be able to tell me of even a single proven case of a child who actually has come to harm as a result of use of these products. Needless to say, they don't say anything about those hurt by sockets when 'protectors' were not being used and, to be fair, even if we knew such a figure (which I presume no-one does) we still wouldn't know in how many, if any, of those cases the harm might have been prevented by use of a 'protector'.
I think it would be essentially impossible to collect even vaguely reliable statistics about these things, particularly in relation to non-fatal injuries. As for fatal incidents, there can be "hardly any" socket-related deaths in children, with or without use of 'protectors', since children account for only a small proportion of the 20 or 30 domestic electrocutions each year.
Kind Regards, John
As I said, we are told of anecdotes of them having 'nearly' done harm, but I'm sure that a good few people have also seen children trying to poke things into 'unprotected' sockets, in which case the notion of 'covering up the socket' is then intuitively attractive. IMO, all of this falls well short of reasonable 'justification' - in one direction or the other.
Kind Regards, John
I'm definitely not advocating them, but I think Ikea had were onto the right idea with their design, instead of having somewhere to stick your finger underneath to remove them, they came with a red one that acted like a key you were supposed to use to remove the white ones.
Unfortunately the white ones were still relatively easy to remove without the key, but the thought was there.
Had also just typed a rant about mothercare, but they seemed to have upped their game
Unfortunately the white ones were still relatively easy to remove without the key, but the thought was there.
Had also just typed a rant about mothercare, but they seemed to have upped their game
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