Shopping Cart Safety Standards

Earlier this year, a study was released showing just how dangerous shopping carts actually are for children to ride in. This issue is apparently prominent enough to have an article about shopping cart related injuries to children to the NIH in 2006. Due to how the voluntary standard of shopping cart has changed over the years, they are now more prone to tipping over. This all leads to the obvious question, what change caused all these injuries? The main cause of injury seems to come from carts tipping over, causing children to hit their heads against the ground. According to Gary Smith, MD, DrPH, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, "... the current voluntary standards for shopping cart safety are not adequate,".

Not all is lost though, the standards of carts can still be updated. Some of the easier solutions to this problem would be to put the children's basket at a lower place on the cart. By putting it at a lower position, the center of cavity would be lower, not allowing the children to tip as easily. That solution is boring and not visually appealing. Some other fun solutions would be to put the child seat on the bottom, as pictured. Now shopping can be fun, and safe for children!

The voluntary standards are not working for the carts, there are a few options to fix this. One way of fixing them would be a set of standards dictated by a government or government body. This probably will not happen because there is no reason that a market would want to be forced into buying a whole new set of carts. Buying a whole new set of carts can be a very expensive for smaller markets.

A more reasonable option is that the market would respond. An example of this would be shops not buying carts which are known to be dangerous. From a marketing point of view, it seems like an easy way to sway new parents into coming to your store, "our carts won't break your children!". No store wants to be the store with the shopping carts that cause brain damage.

Unfortunately, in my limited searches on the Internet I was not able to find any published standards on carts. It would be very interesting to see how exactly the standard has changed over time. I have a feeling that the tipping issues have been caused by carts growing taller and taller. This would be caused because of stores such as Costco and Sams Club. It would be unreasonable for carts to grow wider, since that would clog up aisles. From what I can tell, there is no proof of this.
This is speculation.