Safety Board Finds 82% of Cribs at Hotels, Motels to Be Unsafe

About eight of every 10 cribs inspected at a national sampling of motels and hotels were unsafe, the chairwoman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said Tuesday.

Spot checks in 90 hotels in 27 states and the District of Columbia found loose hardware, unsecured mattress supports, dangerously soft bedding and too-large adult-sized sheets, all of which can cause death by strangulation or suffocation, the commission said.

Ann Brown, the safety commission head, said she had urged the nation’s hotels to join in what she called a “preemptive strike” to assure the safety of their youngest guests.

She voiced disappointment that only one hotel group, Bass Hotels and Resorts, which operates Holiday Inn, Inter-Continental and Crowne Plaza Hotels, has chosen to take part.

The industry trade group, the American Hotel & Motel Assn., said in a statement that it had had no opportunity to review the crib-safety campaign but expressed no objections to it.

Brown said that while 40 infants die in crib-related accidents each year, none has been specifically linked to hotels or motels.

But she said the spot inspections performed by the National SAFE Kids Campaign, which identified safety hazards in 82% of all inspected hotel cribs, shows the potential for tragedy exists.