SIDS: Seeing Infinitely Dangerous Situations

In a startling development, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has unearthed incontrovertible evidence that accidents happen.

Specifically, the commission found that 32 children have died in accidents over the past nine years involving drop-side cribs.

The reasons were many, but seemed to center on caregivers improperly assembling cribs, losing parts, and parts that can break over time as the mechanism ages.

In other words, accidents.

How can we prevent these tragic accidents from occurring?

If you answered, “by properly assembling and maintaining the cribs,” you clearly are not qualified to be a member of the United States Senate.

Because if you were, you’d support New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's proposal:

And just outlaw the things.

Check that problem off as “solved.”

Prior to this revelation we here at Planet Moron were under the assumption that accidents had been banned, perhaps by the UN.  However this is not the case. In fact, despite the best efforts of governmental authorities, life remains unacceptably hazardous.

For example, let’s say you own one of these death cribs but can’t immediately replace it with a fixed-side crib.  You might think, “hey, no problem, I’ll just let the kid sleep with us for a while.”

You didn’t really want to have children did you?

Because, according to the CPSC, 64 children a year die from suffocation while sleeping in the same bed as their caregivers.  That’s more than 20-times the death rate from drop-side cribs.

Which is why we now support the outlawing of adult beds.  And possibly sleeping. 

Also, bathing, as three times as many children a year die while sitting in bath seats, almost always because of caregiver inattention.

And hot weather, given that over ten times as many children a year die of hyperthermia from being left in cars.

And being a boy, which makes you 70% more likely to be injured in an accident.

And being circumcised, the complications from which cause 28 times more deaths than from drop-side cribs.

Before the birth of Baby Moron last fall, we had no idea how dangerous it was to be alive.

But now we know better, and you should too.  For the sake of the children, you should move to Canada, sleep on the floor with your dirty unbathed child while one of you stays awake to keep a watch, two if you have a boy, three if he's Jewish.

Barring that, the least you can do is support Senator Gillibrand's effort to ban a popular and convenient style of crib despite the fact that we routinely accept much higher risks with other child-rearing decisions.

Because there is no greater loss, than a politician's loss of a really good photo op.

J.