Law Seeks to Reduce Garage Door Injuries
All garage-door openers manufactured after Jan. 1 will be required to have safety mechanisms to prevent the doors from crushing people or animals standing beneath them.
Fifty-four children have been killed by garage doors since 1982, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, despite the stiffening of safety standards that year. The new rule is contained in legislation proposed by Rep. Gerry Sikorski (D-Minn.) and supported by an association of trial lawyers.
As of 1993 all new garage-door openers must have one of three devices: a control button that has to be held constantly to make the door close, an electric-eye sensor or a door-edge sensor like those on elevators. Either sensor will cause the door to stop and reverse if anything is underneath it. (Under the 1982 standard a door was supposed to stop and reverse if it touched anything; under the new rule, it should stop before it touches an obstacle.)
Government and industry sources said that since most people want to use a remote control to operate the garage-door opener, the electric-eye and door sensors are expected to be more popular than the control button.
All of the devices have been available as options for some time, said Frank Fitzgerald, executive secretary of the Door Operator and Remote Controls Manufacturers Assn. They can be added to garage-door openers that have already been installed, as long as they are made by the manufacturer who made the original equipment.
Spokesmen for the Chamberlain Group and Stanley Door Systems, two major manufacturers of garage-door openers, said they expected the new safety devices would add $20 to $25 to the cost of a garage-door opener.
The CPSC recommends that all openers be tested once a month to see if the mechanism that is supposed to make the door reverse is working. To perform the test, put a two-inch block of wood or other object under the door. If the door does not reverse immediately when it touches the object, it should be adjusted.
The agency says that in 1989 there were 27 million garage-door openers in use in the United States, and 8 million of them had been installed before the 1982 voluntary standard went into effect.
