This story should get filed under the “if only I had known” category:

At first, Rory’s mother had no idea what caused the boy’s foot to get caught. It was only later, when someone at the hospital remarked on Rory’s shoes, that she began to suspect the Crocs and did an Internet search.

“I came home and typed in ‘Croc’ and ‘escalator,’ and all these stories came up,” said Jodi McDermott, of Vienna, Va. “If I had known, those would never have been worn.”

Informed consent? Should we all be searching the Internet for safety information before a purchase, and can we trust the data that we find? These are deep questions that tug at the roots of compliance and safety regulations.

The first question that comes to my mind is should the Croc be held liable? Consider what comes from a
“consumer rights” perspective:

“These injuries are horrendous,” reports Early Show ConsumerWatch Correspondent Susan Koeppen. “They look like shark bites. This is a six-ton piece of machinery and if your foot, your finger or something gets caught in there, we’re talking a serious, serious injury.”

Scary! What is being done about these six-ton sharks with giant metal teeth ready to tear pedestrian toes into ribbons? Nothing, apparently. Instead, consumer advocates are going after a soft-shoe manufacturer. Consumerreports highlights the frequency of risk as well as the target group. It seems the escalator monsters prefer children:

In Japan, where 3.9 million pairs of Crocs were sold last year, the Trade Ministry asked the Colorado-based maker of Crocs to change the design of its shoes after receiving 65 complaints of Crocs and Crocs knockoffs becoming stuck in escalators between June and November of 2007. Most of the cases involved young children.

Call me crazy, but what was the rate of other soft-shoe complaints on escalators at the same time. Perhaps the problem is that escalator designers assumed steel-toed safety boots for passengers in the way that motorcycles now require helmets? Is the cost of a soft-shoe friendly escalator too much to ask? What about a child-safe escalator design? There seem to be child-safety designs exploding in every other area of the market these days, should the blame for the dangers of six-ton monsters get laid on the feet of soft-shoe wearing children?

In NY, the answer is yes. An attorney filed a USD$7 million (that’s about ten euros) lawsuit that claims the Croc manufacturer is misleading consumers:

“It’s not everyday footwear. It’s especially dangerous on escalators, and this is something (Crocs has) known about for quite some time,” Laskin said. “And they just don’t seem to be doing anything about it.”

[…]

“It’s somewhat ironic that kid after kid keeps getting the same kind of injury,” Laskin said. “And Crocs keeps on saying it’s a fluke.”

Again, I have to ask if perhaps there is something clearly wrong with the escalators if they are maiming children…but I guess the shoe company provides a more juicy or colorful target? The EESF (Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation) was formed in 1991, long before Crocs, and claims they have “reached over 4 million children, parents and teachers since inception”. That tells me the Croc situation is just a new chapter in a long-standing concern that really should be driving us towards better escalators. Maybe I’m just not seeing the Croc threat properly, but here is an alternative approach that also saves energy: shut-down any escalators unless they can pass a Croc test.