Another small child’s foot has been mangled by the combination of the especially-grippy Crocs clogs and a moving escalator, according to WSBTV:
“There’s no reason this should have happened to my daughter,” said Alison Pregliasco, Lexi’s mother. “She was holding onto the rail…I heard her screaming and tried to pull her foot out and it wouldn’t come out and the escalator just kept going down. And, I just started screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Somebody stop this thing, somebody stop this thing. We have to make it stop.’”
Pregliasco said it took 15 minutes to get her daughter’s right foot out of the escalator. EMTs took the child to the hospital, where doctors put pins in her foot and performed surgery to clean bones and remove contaminated skin.
“Three broken toes, two pretty severely broken, the other is just a hairline fracture,” said Pregliasco. “The toe was severed down to the bone and they called it a ‘dirty wound’ because they had escalator grease in there.”
Crocs is currently being sued over a similar incident. The company responded to that lawsuit by saying that they “take escalator safety seriously.”
The CPSC recently issued a warning about “some shoes” causing more risk of entrapment on escalators than others, but were careful not to specify which brand of shoes they were talking about.
CPSC is aware of 77 entrapment incidents since January 2006, with about half resulting in injury. All but two of the incidents involved popular soft-sided flexible clogs and slides.
Girl, 3, Injured On Airport Escalator [WSBTV](Thanks, Ryan!)
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I still don’t understand how they get stuck when regular shoes don’t…
P.S. I can’t even believe people would blame the mother or child or the shoes. Equipment that people use in department stores and airports should not be capable of taking off a foot under ANY circumstance. This is kind of the equivalent of having an open pits full of snakes with no guardrails and a small warning sign reading “don’t go in the pit of snakes”.
Everyone’s attention slips from time to time, which is why dangerous equipment should always have MULTIPLE fail-safes.
@Rectilinear Propagation: Emergency stop buttons are present on all escalators, but the requirements for their location vary widely between U.S. and European standards. In Europe they’re required to be up on top where people can see them and many countries require several to be placed along the length of the escalator. In the U.S. they usually have them hidden near the tread plates at the ends.
There are sensors inside the escalator and when something like a shoelace get trap in there, it is hard enough to trigger the sensor: escalator stops.
When flip-flops get caught, you can pull your foot out of the way easier. In addition, since your toes are exposed you can “feel” the end of the escalator and move your foot.
Crocs are an issue because of the material. The material that crocs are made, it is soft enough for the sensors to not stop: think things like wrappers, paper, food. It any of those things were to trigger the sensor, the escalators would not stop every other 10 minutes.
I know some if not most escalators will stop when they encounter a certain amount of resistance. Maybe little kid foot bones don’t give enough resistance.
Also, foot is inside the Croc and by the time child feels it being eaten by escalator, it is too late: child panic and it can’t react accordantly.
A couple thoughts. The one catch with an easily triggered emergency stop on an escalator (ie, if an object passes a beam, like in an elevator), is the escalator would never work because kids would be shoving stuff in it all day to make it stop. Not young ones, but those old enough to do the same things with elevators. And they do…
Here’s a thought. It’s not just crocs or escalators, but … what happened to teaching children how to walk by lifting their feet? I see kids, teens, and adults shuffling everywhere. No wonder their feet get caught in things or they trip, if they never lift their feet.
@full.tang.halo:
That kid…is back on the escalator again!
@akede2001: It’s nice to know a person that’s trolling around can actually prove that they have a brain.
But for the company’s sake, I would think that they would start to release warnings with a pair of their shoes. No matter what type of misuse the consumer does, they will always try to find a way to “beat the system” to try and get some money out of it. It’s what America and the people have come to, milk it for all it’s worth. I would think that this company would have changed something in the design or even put up warnings signs to help themselves from getting screwed over. Hell, the people that came up with Heely’s had warnings all over the damn box.
Didn’t it first start out with toes sticking out of the Crocs? Maybe a little alteration in the design would help.
Makes me think of the rant Brody did in the Kevin Smith movie Mall Rats about children getting mangled on escalators. I wish I could find that audio clip and post it here… it really sums this all up.
you realize the grating on the escalator is a safety feature because it prevents people wearing normal shoes from catching the intake edge at the bottom of the escalator.This design has worked FINE for decades. If the grille wasn’t there or made flat to accommodate a croc, there would be accidents with on all sorts of shoes. Think about it.
The grille is there because it is the most efficient way to reduce the contact edge surface area while a comb like ramp scoops feet and shoes out of the way.
Along comes a shoe company who comes and introduces a spongy material that squeezes in deeper than what the comb can handle. So what do you do when the crocs cure will mean more danger for the rest of the people who wear normal shoes?
People get hurt at my job all the time for stupid reasons… people need to watch what they are doing, and teach the kids the same. Sad the kiddo had to get mauled, but I betcha she watches where those paws go now… My sis got a jacket cord stuck in one once…you bet she doesn’t let her kids near one without watching closely…
Pick up your feet!
Looking at a pair of Crocs, it’s unclear how exactly it would get sucked into the bottom of an escalator.
Were they wearning an open-toed Croc (looks like a flip-flop)? If so, then it’s not a Croc problem, it’s a general footwear problem.
Also, what’s with the escalator? Every escalator I’ve seen has a little cow-catcher sort of thing at the end. How would the tip of a shoe (or a toe) get by that?
@mannyv: Supposedly the spongy material oozes into the cracks during compression. When the person lifts the foot, the spongy stuff grips the crocs slightly to the metal grate. A person might panic and keep their foot there despite the little effort it takes to pull one’s foot out.
You could not pay me to wear Crocs. People who wear Crocs, short of something like gardening, are stupid. </blanket statement>
one less pair of crocs
one less bastard kid
+2 for society
@ppiddyp: Cars can take off feet and legs and torsos too, and yet you find them in horrifying proximity to grade schools. So is that like walking around with a mouthful of cobras and tarantulas?
Balls. The actual sin is that “real” Crocs retail @ $40.
I have 2 pairs of Chinese knock-offs @ $4/pair. (I’ve worn both; I feel no difference.) (And at $4 and comfort, I don’t give a rat’s patootie what you think of the esthetics.
- You want fugly? I give you Birkenstocks. (And these cowflops-with-straps don’t even have the Ace of being inexpensive!)
Yes mom, there is an etiquette to avoiding escalator trouble. The toothy ends can be dangerous (just LOOK at the stairs sliding relentlessly between the static teeth!
===
And why are the yellow-painted strips (1 inch) – which must have been added as a visual aid to see where the step in front of you ends, and a new step (up or down) begins is ALWAYS INSTALLED BACKWARDS so you can’t see them? (At least in my city.)
And yes don’t hide the STOP butten. (Though I suspect assholes wanting a little delinquent in-your-face-display might find its obviousity too tempting….
@womynist: “I can’t believe people are even weraing those things!They’re terribly ugly, and there’s no way they can provide the kind of support that your feet desperately need. It sucks that a child was hurt, but come on people, stop buying these ugly rubber “shoes”!”
Actually, they do provide support. I have very high arches (my mother has recently had several surgeries for this same problem) and I have a hard time finding shoes that don’t feel like torture devices after wearing them for 15 minutes. I got a pair of Crocs and wore them throughout my pregnancy. My OB was amazed that my feet and ankles were never swollen and never once got sore. They may not be sexy, but they’re the most comfortable shoes I own and I still wear them all the time.
As a matter of fact, the first time I ever saw them was on my podiatrist’s feet.
As for the kid – it’s obviously an escalator problem. You don’t hear about kids with Crocs getting their feet stuck in other things with moving parts. Parents have learned to make sure their kids’ fingers and toes are out of the way when they close their sliding van doors; they don’t let them play on elevators; they warn them against playing on train tracks, but they seem to have forgotten how dangerous escalators can be.
Escalators aren’t exactly people-friendly, much less kid-friendly. Anyone can get hurt on one, but adults know to be careful – children depend on their parents to warn them about dangerous situations, and that’s obviously not happening.
BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA kids stuck in elevators.
A quick Google search shows that in 1994 (well before Crocs came out) there were 7300 escalator accidents that required a visit to the emergency room, 20% of which resulted in injury to the foot or hand. Assuming at least half of these were foot injuries, you have 730 foot injuries over the course of a year, B.C. (before crocs). Given that this was 14 years ago, when there were significantly less escalators, and also given the relative popularity of Crocs, it’s fair to say that 77 Crocs incidents over the course of 17 months isn’t that big of a deal.
For the love of God. Crocs are no more dangerous than the foam/canvas flip flops we all wore as children. It’s called common friggin’ sense. Don’t wear them on an escalator. I wouldn’t put Crocs on my children (and both of my children DO own Crocs) and then take them to a place where they would be expected to use an escalator any more than my mother would have allowed me to wear those foam flip flops to the mall.
Same reason I remember as a child not being able to wear flip flops to carnivals–and seeing signs posted on all of the ‘fun houses’ that say you must be wearing ‘appropriate shoes’ and ‘no thongs’ etc.
Common sense. We couldn’t sell it for a penny, i swear.
“There’s no reason this should have happened to my daughter,” said Alison Pregliasco, Lexi’s mother.
There *is* no reason this should have happened. The mother should have been aware of the issues with these shoes. I’ve been reading about them for ages. Yet she still put these butt-ugly, dangerous things on her daughter’s feet. It’s her own damn fault.
bcsus83: dozens of comments before people start making sense.
Crocs may be ugly, but they’re nice to wear in hot climates where the whole shoes and socks thing isn’t that comfortable. The fact that you can just hose/rinse them off when they get dirty is a nice feature, too.
ergh, poor child! I mean seriously, the poor kid was hurt!
@ppiddyp: Enter nanny state. Because we can’t (read: WON’T) take responcibility for ourselves we need Big Brother to step in and do it for us. Oh, by the way, I just threw up on myself.
Stupid people will ultimately all wind up being chewed up in some kind of machinery, like say, an escalator. Or, if they’re too young to understand and it happens, they’re probably the children of stupid people.
2 kids. 1 & 3. Both love their sandals & crocs. Neither is more dangerous than the other. Neither is more or less dangerous than a pair of sneakers. Let’s be serious here, do you think a piece of machinery capable of hauling several thousand pounds at a time would balk any more at slicing through a sneaker than a croc?
My parents always told me to watch the end of the escalator and make sure it doesn’t eat my feet. We tell our kids the escalator is hungry and wants toes, so step up at the end. You know what? They do. Both have all 10 toes.
I don’t care for the things, but the kids love them. Common sense, when employed by parents can save children from their own inexperience as well as stupidity on the part of parents.
I feel bad for the kid, but that’s where my sympathy ends. This will result in another lawsuit, where the parents sue Crocs, the mall, the escalator manufacturer, the escalator maintenance company, the tooth fairy and Bruce Campbell. I remember a time when people would have said, “Wow, that’s terrible, I should have paid more attention. I hope the kid gets better.” Today, it’s more like, “Oh crap, who can I sue into oblivion over this accident my kid had?”
Sooner or later someone will sue a spoon manufacturer for their loved one’s murder by spoon. When it was the spoon-wielder who murdered their loved one. Where does it end?
“There’s no reason this should have happened to my daughter,” said Alison Pregliasco, Lexi’s mother.
Didn’t you hear the reports for the last, oh I dunno, year maybe that talk about kids getting their feet mangled if they wear crocs on an escalator?
I feel ridiculously sorry for the child, but seriously…if you find out something is dangerous for your kids, why do you still insist on buying them and then blaming someone else when something goes wrong? And she puts no blame on the shoes, just the escalator. What now, is every building with escalators going to be required to post warning notices about not being allowed to ride if they’re wearing crocs?
Several commenters are missing a critical point here. The shoes are not getting caught at the end of the escalator right next to the emergency stop, they are getting caught by the *side* of the escalator.
“She was holding the rail… kept going down” etc.
I never knew escalators were that dangerous, as a kid I would always lift my foot slightly and let the the escalator push my feet off instead of stepping off, guess I was lucky
So, uh…the lesson here is to LIFT UP YOUR FEET?! I mean really, who doesn’t teach their kids to not let the escalator suck their toes down into oblivion?
I am still scared of that happening to me now, at 23! And I remember being scared about it when I was little, as well, so…yeah. Learn to parent, blahlblahblah.
@full.tang.halo:
Mallrats! Awesome….just awesome….ftw!
@akede2001: What is wrong with you?
It’s the girl’s fault for not knowing in advance that an escalator could catch a certain type of shoe?
Even worse, it’s exactly people like yourself you go absolutely apeshit when something like this happens to them and then sue for a gazillion dollars. You want to post here that if you or your child’s foot was mangled in an escalator you’d be saying “guess it was my fault!” Nope, you’d be fucking apoplectic.
It’s always the people with the least empathy for others that handle situations like this the worse.
@akede2001: What is wrong with you?
It’s the girl’s fault for not knowing in advance that an escalator could catch a certain type of shoe?
Even worse, it’s exactly people like yourself who go absolutely apeshit when something like this happens to them and then sue for a gazillion dollars. You want to post here that if you or your child’s foot was mangled in an escalator you’d be saying “guess it was my fault!” Nope, you’d be fucking apoplectic.
It’s always the people with the least empathy for others that handle situations like this the worse.
The photos on the news last night showed the girl’s foot and the shoe. Most of the injuries were to the top of her foot and the toes of the shoes. The mother said, “the escalator kept going down,” so I assume the girl’s shoes were caught as a higher step folded down into the step below. The “cow-catcher” at the landings would do no good. Based on what the mother said, the girl was either standing backwards on the down elevator or was on the up elevator and the “down” Mom was referring to was the upper step sinking into the lower one. As this starts to happen a few feet before the end of the run, I could see how in a crowded airport with lots of people carrying luggage that the mother might not have been able to reach the kill switch, and could certainly see how in Crocs one wouldn’t feel the toe getting caught in the folding steps until it was too late to pull free.
I still fail to see how this is Crocs fault and I hate them quite a bit. If anything… It appears to be an escalator design/lack of parental attention problem at worse.
@twophrasebark:
It’s the girl’s fault for not knowing in advance that an escalator could catch a certain type of shoe?
No, it is not the little girl’s fault, bless her heart.
It is her parent’s fault.
I never allowed my three year olds to ride escalators.
As in n-e-v-e-r. Seriously. Not once. Not till they were much older. Three is really too young to have the dexterity to process the need to step off at the correct time.
To Finder: Yes! I was waiting for the Mallrats reference!
Which is exactly how I feel about the whole thing. I teach my 2 year
old how to get off and on the escalator, and I make sure to watch her
and *hold her hand* while she’s doing it. And she *definitely* under
*no* circumstances is allowed *near* the thing unless I”m there to
hold her hand.
And Crocs are for the water. There’s an exception for the preschool
age set when they’re just learning about making choices and having
consequences. (like your friends will shun you for wearing crocs in
public.)
To the people that blame the consumer, it honestly is the company’s responsibility to a certain extent. They have to make their products safe and essentially because they start a “risk” by becoming a business, they are open to lawsuits like this. They have deep pockets and that is what it is all about…
@wgrune: Of course not.
But to fight your analogy, if Pintos have a rether consistant tendancy to explode if they’re hit from a certain angle, should we blame the person for driving it?
Oh wait, this is The Consumerist. Oops.
The logical answer to this is that Crocs manufacturers need to do something about this, wether it’s doing research into how to prevent these kinds of accidents or simply LETTING PEOPLE KNOW THAT THERE IS DANGER ASSOCIATED WITH ESCALATORS AND THESE SHOES.
Seriously, the amount of blame-the-victim going on here is absolutely disguasting. I can’t even read the comments any more.
@Xkeeper: I don’t know how I managed to miss my typo of “disgusting”, but whoops regardless.
@APFPilot: There’s also a cool concept called stairs. I’ve tried them out before, and they’re pretty effective at the whole transportation deal. Yeah, you have to move more, but at least your foot won’t get ripped off on them.
Even if this kid was sucked in the side on the escalator and not the end it is still not the shoes fault. Kids are STUPID and parents are worse by ignoring the kids. Every time I am at the mall I see the kids on the escalators doing dumb things like running up and down the moving steps, kicking at the non moving sides and anything else you can possibly think of EXCEPT standing their retarded selves still and stepping up at the end of the track. There needs to be more responsibility from the parents nowadays and more discipline allowed for dealing with an unruly child. If I had screwed around on the escalator when I was little I would have gotten my ass whooped.
If anything the mall should sue the parent for not attending to the child and causing a scene.
I think almost every post here is absurd.
Accidents happen every day in normal situations. Either by freak luck or our attention was diverted. This is an escalator, not an industrial food grinder. Not everyone approaches one wearing a welding mask and steel toed boots.
It was a sad accident that maybe could’ve been avoided. But I don’t think it’s fair to call the mother stupid or irresponsible and even more cruel to blame the girl for wearing Nerf footwear.
If the shoes were made out of dangling string covered in ground glass, I might blame Crocs, but it just seems like an unfortunate propensity to get caught in certain situations. Did you know that most car accidents are caused by people wearing shoes!? Let’s outlaw them all!
@akede2001: You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight and you don’t bring crocs to an Escalator!
I got my Smurf shoelace caught in an escalator when I was 5. Ripped the damn lace off the shoe. Scared me half to death, and I was pissed that Papa Smurf got ate. Even to this day, I jump at the end of those bastards.
@akede2001:
Actually, it’s a double extraction. It’s from “Mallrats”, and it’s a hilarious line.
I was on an escalator once when the powered went out. Everyone not holding on to the handrai, adults and children alike, went tumbling forward, downward, headfirst onto those metal-edged steps. Those that held on as per the instructions posted at the beginning of the escalator went uninjured and walked away. Those who were injured (and there were some pretty nasty looking contusions) threatened to sue, but don’t know how that would stand up in court against a whole gaggle of uninjured folks who followed directions.
It ain’t about the Crocs, folks. I wish this would stop coming up. It’s like seeing all the nightly news casts where the criminals are always minorities. You see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear.
Dig.