By: Sean Millski
Has anyone else seen that the news is suddenly full of stories about kids being hit and killed by…..Televisions!? The first Delaware Valley incident that caught my attention was earlier this week in Kensington, That resulted in only an injury, the second, yesterday in Burlington county new jersey resulted in the death of a two and half year old boy! In doing a little research I found this is not at all uncommon. Every major city in the country reports many such instances every year. For example; Last November in Florida a 16mo old boy was killed when an older sibling climbed a 4ft tall TV to turn it off and ended up toppling it over onto his infant brother. Almost the exact same thing happened in Phoenix,Az. 3 times in as many months!
Even though I immediately started to suspect a combination of poor parenting and the trend towards huge TV’s (even though the one in Jersey yesterday was only 27″), as it turns out the vast majority of cases I looked into the police have put the blame on faulty TV stands and not the TV’s or parents. Which begs the question… What is with the problem with the TV stands!? Are people not putting them together properly , are the little plastic discs under a modern TV too small to support the weight or are the crappy fiber-board stands sold today too cheap to even be safe in your home!? If your thinking ” Whew, I’m safe ’cause I used a cool wall mount” you’d be wrong because in a few instances it was a faulty wall mount or installation of the mount that caused the TV to fall. So unless your Builder Bob your not safe there either.
I could be way off here but we didn’t seem to have this problem years ago, even with the 2 ton sets we grew up with because furniture was made by a craftsmen, came assembled already and making a quality product was still job one. Of course the old school TV’s came already in a sturdy, balanced stand but even the hulking sets of the 80’s and 90’s were supported by real, honest to goodness furniture. I think this just another case of the increasingly ignorant consumer being screwed by the man at price-mart.
Maybe the lesson is to put out the three or four dollars for one of those furniture securement kits to keep your children, pets and property safe?
I don’t know what the answer is but maybe before you have the family over for the holidays you should take a second and make sure your TV is securely mounted to the wall or get those chinese directions out and give your realistic looking, veneered wood TV stand the once over.
Interesting perspective! Makes ya think??