HIDDEN DANGER

Study: Baby Walkers Have Injured Hundreds of Thousands of Kids

Pediatricians warn again that devices are a major safety hazard.

More than 230,000 young children were injured by baby walkers between 1990 and 2014, a shocking new study has found, and pediatricians are warning parents that walkers are a serious safety hazard. The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, found that 91 percent of walker-related injuries to children 15 months of younger were to the head or neck. About 30 percent of the injuries were concussions or skull fractures. “It only takes a young sibling to leave the door to the basement stairs open briefly for an injury to occur,” senior author Gary Smith told CBS News. “A child in a baby walker would be across the room and down the stairs before the parent could respond.” New safety standards have led to the number of injuries dropping—from 20,650 in 1990 to 2,001 in 2014—but Smith said that, although safety is improving, “there are still too many serious injuries occurring related to this product.”