A humor website that lists various “dumb laws” reckons the Infant Crib Safety Act to number among that category. The Infant Crib Safety Act requires that cribs sold retail in Washington meet certain safety requirements. Each and every safety requirement in the Act is based on experience. Each safety requirement addresses a hazard that has seriously harmed or killed infants in cribs. The safety requirements are not hypotheticals.
Some of the requirements in the Infant Crib Safety Act of necessity sound arbitrary. For instance, experience teaches that prominent corner posts sticking above the end panels of cribs pose a hazard because children’s clothes can get and has gotten caught on high corner posts, presenting a serious strangling hazard.
Like speed limits, the line has to be drawn somewhere. Why 35 mph in a given area? Why not 30 mph? It is of necessity somewhat arbitrary. Yet few of us would want to travel on the roadways if there were no speed limits.
Experience teaches that corner posts on cribs more than 1/6 inch higher than the end panels are a hidden hazard most parents would not be aware of intuitively. And that is why this and other safety requirements exist.
Also, the website states with misleading broadness that “you” are breaking the law if “you” sell a crib that is not in compliance with the Act. Well, only if “you” are a commercial user as defined in the Act, which includes “you” if and only if “you” deal in cribs or if “you” hold yourself out as having knowledge or skill peculiar to cribs. This includes, for example, “child care facilities and family child care homes licensed by the department of social and health services.”[1]
So, unless “you” fall into that definition, and most of us parents and ordinary consumers certainly do not, “you” are not breaking this law by buying or selling a non-compliant crib in a private sale. Nevertheless, it is prudent to discard older cribs and purchase newer, safer ones that meet all current safety standards.
And, no. Children’s safety is not dumb and this is not a dumb law.