Each year, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), about 40 infants drown in industrial-sized buckets. Babies who are just beginning to walk can, if left unattended, fall headfirst into large buckets; but they aren't big enough to tip a bucket over and escape. To put this risk in perspective, about 170 million five-gallon buckets are made each year.Thus, the Commission acted because 0.0000235% of all buckets made each year have been involved in drownings that could easily have been prevented had the hapless babies' guardians been slightly more attentive than the average houseplant. In addition to the philosophical problem of not holding people responsible for their own negligence, in this case there is the practical problem that all of the design changes suggested so far by the Commission staff would render buckets either entirely useless or dangerous as containers.
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