Ridiculous Study Reveals Shopping Carts to be Potential Death Traps

          Seeing as yesterday we had that fantastic post about the wackos in Australia who conducted a study on the impact texting has on walking, I figured I'd write about another insanely stupid study today. This one has to do with injuries related to shopping carts. Yeah, you read that right.

          I read this article on Huffington Post about a new Clinical Pediatrics study that found that over 24,000 children go to the emergency room each year due to shopping cart related injuries. That's about 66 children every day. Falls from the shopping cart are the most common injury sustained and account for 70% of the injuries, so it makes sense that the head was the most commonly injured body part.

          A study researcher and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Dr. Gary Smith, M.D., Dr.P.H. (whatever all of that means), concluded that "the current voluntary standards for shopping cart safety are not adequate." He continues to say that the overall number of child injuries associated with shopping carts hasn't decreased since the current safety standards were implemented and the number of concussions and other head injuries is increasing. Researchers suggest that shopping cart design should be changed in an effort to reduce the risk of child injury.

          Yeah, because the problem is the shopping carts, not the sad excuses for parents steering them. I've got a child and I've never had to go to the emergency room over a shopping cart injury because I know how to be a parent. I don't let her climb all over the thing like a monkey. I don't leave her standing on it or in it and turn my back for a second on her. The problem here isn't that shopping carts aren't safe enough, it's piss poor parents. What do you want, padded boxes with wheels?

          The doctors involved in this research spent time and resources figuring out how many children were injured from shopping carts because these children's' parents don't pay enough attention to them. There are clear warnings on those goddamn shopping carts that say how to properly seat your child in them. Isn't it bad enough that those warnings had to be made? You can't follow them and your child gets hurt, so suddenly shopping carts aren't safe. What's next?

          This is utterly absurd for three reasons:

              1) The study was done in the first place and research was conducted in connection with it.
              2) So many children are headed to the emergency room over this shit.
              3) Researchers are proposing changes in shopping cart design to make them safer.

          For the love of Jesus or the aliens floating in deep space, watch your goddamn kids so people with nothing better to do don't have to conduct ridiculous research as part of an insanely stupid study that I end up having to see on the news. Seriously... It's not cool.

Huggin, not thuggin,

-The Absurdist