Wanted: common sense

Of course we need to protect consumers from flawed merchandise that can hurt them when used exactly as a normal person with common sense would use it. For example, it's not unreasonable to drive a Ford Pinto at legal speeds on a road. You wouldn't expect it to blow up on you when hit by another vehicle. However, it is unreasonable to assume that hot coffee won't hurt you if it spills on you.

It seems very easy. It is not.

The latest example.

My 18 month old niece has one of these chairs and she loves it. It always sits on the floor. Why? Because common sense tells you that a foam chair with no rigid edges would easily topple over. When it's on the floor, the baby can't fall very far, and thus the experience becomes part of the normal knocks and bangs of life. You do not put it on a table or other high surface. Why? Because a child sitting in it could easily fall out of it and off the surface.

Now a fun and useful product is being recalled, because some people put it on a high surface with a child in it, and the child fell off the surface. Some were seriously injured. Charming.

I don't think the toy should be recalled. It's the people who put the child in a foam chair on a table that should be recalled. Or at the very least returned for the installation of a common sense patch.