Wego Kite Tube of Death Accident

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Ollie_Lindy

Laughing out loud. What happened to our kite tube discussion - did we get bored and move on to hot coffee...?

The focus was always on the idea of "product liability"...not drifty at all.

[velocityboy]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

The focus was always on the idea of "product liability"...not drifty at all.

Except I don't think anyone is talking about banning the sale of coffee. Which is a good thing, else my lines of code written per day would go down by about 30%

[Undertoad]

And that's that, here's the recall:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thech..._recalled.html

Less than two weeks after the Consumer Product Safety Commission first issued a safety alert about an increasingly popular new water-sport--kite tubing--one of the makers has decided to withdraw its product.
Sportsstuff, having received reports of two deaths in the United States and a variety of serious injuries, is voluntarily recalling about 19,000 Wego Kite Tubes, the CPSC announced this morning, The agency said it is aware of 39 injury incidents with 29 of those resulting in medical treatment. Those injuries include a broken neck, punctured lung, chest and back injuries and facial injuries. According to the CPSC press release: "Sportsstuff has been unable to determine the cause of the incidents. Nevertheless, the company has withdrawn the kite tube from the market and is undertaking this voluntary recall out of an abundance of caution."

[wolf]

Somebody ran the formula from Fight Club, didn't they?

[velocityboy]

Originally Posted by wolf

Somebody ran the formula from Fight Club, didn't they?

No doubt Let's make up some numbers:

This thing came out last year, was widely advertised and won a boating product of the year award. I'm going to make a conservative estimate and say they sold 5,000 units. They retail for $599, but can be had for about $450 in some places, so let's say after materials, fabrication, shipping, marketing, etc. etc. they net $100 on each unit. That's a profit of $500k. One or two lawsuits, even if SportsStuff won, could eat up most of that in legal fees. And if they lost with any kind of settlement, well, game over Charlie. Not to mention the negative press that could impact their other product sales.

Now let's look at the press release for the recall. They claim 29 injuries requiring medical attention. We know from the press that two of those were deaths. Let's assume that about half of these were from people with excess testosterone (witness the internet video of the guy getting on the tube and telling the boat driver, "Just gun it, dude!"). So 15 injuries and one death affecting users following directions. That means, in a year of average use, you stand a 0.3% chance of being hurt seriously enough to require medical attention, or a 0.02% chance of death. (Given the estimate of number of units is correct).

<sarcasm>The system works.</sarcasm>

[MaggieL]

A triumph for dimwits everywhere, who will be protected from themselves in yet another way. Yet it's still true that in foolproof systems the fool is always stronger than the proof.

And now we can watch the resale value of used "kites of death" skyrocket.

[Pangloss62]

Maybe now this kite tube string will end. I'm not trying to claim some kind of honor, but I think I might have started this whole thing with a post about how the National Park Service banned their use at Lake Powell about a month ago (can't remember exactly). I never thought it would go this far; the string became more about law and responsibility than the product, and now the latter is being recalled. What will we talk about next? Lawn Darts went off the shelves years ago.

[Happy Monkey]

Irwin Mainway...