Consumer Commission Moves to Ban Lawn Darts by End of Year
Three days after a Tennessee girl was accidentally stabbed in the forehead by a lawn dart and rushed to a hospital in critical condition, the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Friday approved a ban that will remove the toy from the nation’s store shelves by the end of the year.
Over the last decade the long, one-pound, metal-tipped plastic darts, which are supposed to be tossed into rings placed on the lawn, have been blamed for as many as 6,700 injuries. In 150 to 200 of those cases the darts penetrated someone’s skull, and in at least three incidents deaths occurred.
Friday’s vote directed the agency staff to prepare an official notice of the ban by Friday. If the commissioners then approve the legal language, it will be published in the Federal Register, taking effect 30 days later.
The action does not include a recall of the games already in people’s homes. That prompted Commissioner Carol Dawson to issue a plea to parents to keep the darts out of the hands of children.
The ban was the result of a one-man crusade by David Snow, a Riverside father who began lobbying the commission and Congress after his 7-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a lawn dart in April, 1987.
Congress passed legislation last week requiring a similar ban. The commission had been considering it for more than a year.
Federal regulations have restricted sales of lawn darts to sporting goods stores and sports sections of department stores in an effort to keep them away from children. However, compliance has been spotty.
In Nashville, 11-year-old Amy Herrin of McMinnville, Tenn., remained in critical condition in the pediatric intensive care unit of Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Friday after eight hours of surgery to remove the dart and repair damage it caused.
The girl was injured as she played the game with a cousin outside a neighbor’s house. Her mother, Sue Tucker, said the cousin raced into her kitchen, followed by Amy, with the dart protruding from her head.
“She just said, ‘Momma, it’s in my head.’ All else I remember is me screaming,” Sue Tucker said.
Ban on Some Three-Wheel Vehicles
The product safety agency on Friday also voted to extend indefinitely a ban on the sale of three-wheel all-terrain vehicles. It accomplished that by agreeing to a number of voluntary standards, accepted by the ATV industry, including a requirement that ATVs have four wheels.
Last January the manufacturers of the machines agreed to stop selling the three-wheel ATVs in a consent agreement that won approval from a federal judge in the spring.
That settlement called for the commission and manufacturers to work out safety standards for the off-road, single-rider machines that have been blamed for nearly 1,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries in recent years.
One member of the three-member commission, Anne Graham, voted against the voluntary standards, contending that the agency was not going far enough.
“Sadly, I get the impression the commission simply wants the problem to go away,” she said.
She urged a ban on child-sized all-terrain vehicles and more stringent stability provisions.
