1:53 I just assembled a cheap Ikea dresser that has this feature except with an added twist; you can only open one drawer at a time, but if you mount it to the wall using the built-in bracket it overrides the system and then you can open all the drawers. They don't pull out as far as I'd like though still...
@@Ariccio123they have really much money for rnd and huge numbers of items sold so they can come up with really ingenious, really simple but custom solutions to things. I have the same dresser, the attachment plate for the wall pulls on something, that moves the locking mechanism out of the way. I was really impressed, when I assembled it.
@Ariccio123 Look at 'Cabinet Interlock' mechanisms. By using linkages, you can allow one drawer to open, and opening it moves a rod that runs the height if the cabinet that locks all other drawers. When the drawer is returned, the rod moves back and allows another drawer to be opened. Same mechanism is used in toolboxes.
That's incredible. I had no idea those existed. I immediately thought of the locked drawers Matthias mentions later in the video and thought that would already be a decent solution, but with the disabling mechanism, it's perfect.
Decades ago I had a very acrobatic male cat who loved climbing bookcases. He weighed twenty pounds so his explorations were a problem. He never was injured. But when a bookcase fell over (caught by the sofa) a vase and some knickknacks got broken. I ended up anchoring everything to the wall using screws and strong picture wire. A very simple and basic fix that I should have done earlier.
I own an office furniture business and these regulations have been present in this industry for quite some time. I always have to explain to customers not to try and move their 4 tier lateral files on their own because they have a series of weights in the bottom along the back wall of the cabinet, and it is quite heavy. Most file cabinets now also have a drawer locking rod so you can only open one drawer at a time. It's basically just a bar with a series of pins and the bar will drop the pins into a gap on a little platform on each drawer once one is open.
This year I bought a little under-desk cabinet on wheels for my office at home and almost couldn’t get it up the stairs on my own, I had to go step by step. Being able to fully open the drawers is kind of a luxury, but I really appreciate it - I just won’t ever carry it downstairs again, it’s married to the apartment now. Real, proper office furniture is a different world - I paid € 175 for that thing and was unhappy about it at first, but they start at € 580 when you buy them new, and although we can debate whether that’s justified or not, they really are built to an insanely high standard.
@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez Not necessarily. Imagine you are a juror and the plaintiff's layers show you thousands of reports that the company received regarding their dressers injuring and killing kids despite all dressers being delivered with securing straps. Then they show you designs that the company created internally by engineering department that prevent tip-overs. The lawyer will say something like "would you stand on the side of the road selling lemonade year after year with a sign that said 'this ice might choke you' knowing that the ice was still killing kids despite your sign? Or would you change the design of the ice to the safe ice the FIRST time a death occurred." Now remember that most civil cases never go to court in the first place.
People in America are allergic to taking personal responsibility. How can you sue a company for a piece of furniture falling on you because of the way YOU used it?!?
I just added earthquake straps to a bookcase and an upright freezer today. It took less than half an hour to install with drywall anchors, brackets, and steel cabling. Cost was
@@nitePhyyre Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. People aren't doing things wrong, the culture has created an uneducated people. Culture has encouraged us to stop thinking. _“Not thinking”_ has made us assume drywall is a safe and secure anchor when it's not. Attack the culture, and you'll find lots and lots of things start getting fixed.
@@nitePhyyre depends on the type of plug you use..... there are ones that have wings that open up when you tighten the screw. While they won't take as much weight as screwing into a stud, they take more than a simple plug.
I love when the algorithm drops an interesting and educational video in my feed. I got a new dresser a couple years ago and wondered why the drawers didn't completely open. I thought it was because it was cheap and from IKEA lol
Here in the UK, shelves and dressers come with l-brackets and instructions to screw it to the wall. My guess is any attempt to sue would counter with "you didn't follow the safety instructions".
@@snower13the act calls for an anchoring kit as well as the other requirements. We live in an area subject to earthquakes, so anchoring has long been an” common- sense imperative (not a law). Of course, installing anchors (whether supplied or added) requires a certain amount of skill, which may be beyond the average dresser-buyer. For example, we installed a 2x4 batten attached to the studs to anchor 5’ pantry cabinets. Screw lengths, sizes - our best guess.
@@turbocactus44 Isn't it more the fault of people who didn't supervise their children well enough for this to be a needed thing? Saying that saving children's lives is a fault is a bit weird.
Yup. UK here. Bought a kids storage unit and it had a strip of canvas, screws and plugs. As we have kids I did fit it and was impressed with the strength of the fixings and strap. Couldn’t pull it over with most of my strength. Unsure why this solution shouldn’t be enough for everywhere, as it works extremely well. Screwing into the floor is not suitable in some houses but wall screwing nearly always will be.
@@lawrencemanning yes but houses in America have a lot of drywall which doesn’t exactly make the best anchoring point, add onto that whatever electrical circuits, plumbing, and insulation may be hidden behind said drywall and the ‘simple solution’ becomes a lot more complicated
@@sonipitts easy ordinance fix by preventing that prohibition in lease terms when it comes to safety anchors. Protects the owners too since usage decisions would be entirely on the tenant.
Eighteen years ago, when we bought our dresser set, the only set we agreed looked nice was the plain cherry colored set with black stone tops. They weigh a ton. They also don’t tip over. The only thing in the set without a granite top is the tall dresser. The top of this dresser has smaller, side-by-side drawers in two rows at the top. That would also help prevent tipping (unless you opened them all). I don’t remember ever getting anti-tip hardware with a dresser. I guess I am just old.
If the manufacturer specifies that the dresser needs to be anchored to the wall and you ignore that, you should not be able to sue, if you can the liability laws must be changed rather than regulating dressers. Whats next, sueing the electrical company because you died putting your tongue into a socket?
In fairness, if you died, you wouldn’t be bringing suit against anyone. I would feel sorry for the person who discovered the body as the “What the ??? was s/he doing” questions would have no answers.
Manufacturer's liability should not be able to be dismissed by making instructions or warnings which are predicatly not followed by the end user for any reason. And I'm not referring to just drawers but everything in general. Compenies would 100 % abuse a system like that to save money.
Given that most modern homes are required to have child safe outlets, pretty much 😅 Granted I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, just sucks that most builders will put in the cheapest compliant outlets they can find, which almost all suck and will fail to the point you can't plug anything into them pretty quick. Ironically I'm more likely to get shocked by trying to force a plug into a stuck safety outlet than shoving something foreign in the outlet (though of course I'm not a stupid child, just a stupid adult)
Was it a black Friday deal? Do you want some more? Are you going to keep it? What does it eat? I got a cold recently, do you know where you got yours from?
Now I envision Matthias sneaking up in a long trenchcoat, opening it and showing deep pockets with rolls of paper plans in them, whispering: "heeeey, looking for some extra deep drawers..?"
Maybe if you found a dresser/chest of drawers that you like the appearance of, you could make deeper drawers for it? That way, you already have the carcass, at least the drawer fronts and maybe some slides, so about 50% (ish) is already done.
Step 1) screw a cleat to the floor. Whatever kind of cleat you feel competent to make and install. Step 2) slide the dresser's receiver over the cleat. The dresser is now anchored and won't tip over, but is easily slid back out again to fetch whatever fell behind it.
@@zaxmaxlax why all the hate for platform framing ? It's not required by law you can build a house from virtually any material you can afford in the US. It's the most common because when properly done platform framing has many advantages including earthquake resistance and lower cost than most other methods.
@@alexlail7481 Im not hating but matter of fact it IS required by law in pretty much 90% of the US since you need permits and inspections for construction.
This is infuriating because we DO anchor our dressers to the wall (because well, duh, we want our small kids to survive), but we can't buy new ones that can hold our clothes. So we're just using plastic totes now.
Nonsense I am 68 years old and NEVER had a dresser falling over. Let alone killing somebody. Neither did I ever heard somebody who had it happening to them.
@@Spikejwh1happened to my kids when they were 4 and 3. They opened all the drawers and climbed them like stairs. No one was killed though. Not even hurt.
Yes, but adult deaths dont make sensational news stories like children deaths. And given the current social media attitude towards men, it may even be welcomed.
I guess I’m the exception, but I just attached my dressers to the wall. I’d rather spend half a day once making sure my furniture is safe, than my kids turning into statistics.
Same here, everything that could tip is fastened to a wall, be with with a properly sized screw, L brackets or the flat bits of fabric Ikea provides. With the concrete walls, it’s also a nice excuse to bust out the SDS+ hammer drill 😎
Ten years ago I made a dresser for my boys that also functions as stairs for their bunk bed. The top drawer is a foot deep and each drawer gets deeper as they go down. The bottom is so deep we keep extra blankets in it. It’s the most stable thing I’ve ever made 😁
I built my sons dresser/changing table when he was born. I always had tipping in mind but i built it 24” deep and made entirely of oak. Things a beast with 0 percent chance of ever tipping.
@@mattdworaczyk1884 Because Ikea is big enough to go after after failing to attach it to the wall, politicians jump on that band wagon for some more vote while protecting the children!
Several solutions come to mind, but most of them are in jest. The useful suggestion would be to have L-shaped, corner dressers with drawers opening at 90 degrees to each other. One half stabilizes the other half. Yeah, you have that dead space in the corner, but I'm sure someone could regulate a use for that (or maybe include a lazy susan $$$). On the lighter side... Consider nudism. Can you strap the toddler to the wall or floor instead? Can you strap 60 pounds of weight to the toddler? If that doesn't prevent climbing, then the climber should be sturdy enough to survive. Takata airbags? NERF furniture? Build a ladder on the short side to encourage safe climbing. But then you might need a safety rail, climbing harness and such. Thanks for the info. A great reason to save your old furniture and thrift antiques to avoid newly constructed rubbish.
Pretty sure the UK already dealt with that one. Next, they'll take away cars, because of how many people a vehicle can run over. Maybe by doing something like raising the price of automobiles to the same price as houses, tax the fuel sky high, then force people to live in cordoned off areas 15 minutes across. Oh, wait....
In one area of China, people must have a barcode engraved to identify the owner when buying a kitchen knife. Funny thing is, the US now has more surveillance cameras per capita than China.
Relatedly, in 1669, King Louis XIV of France banned sharp, pointed knives in an attempt to reduce violence. This has persisted to this day in the form of rounded table knives.
@@juliebrooke6099 What is an "effective" gun law? Of the ten most dangerous cities for gun violence, 8 or 9 of them have extremely stringent and restrictive gun laws.
One way to save lives at a lower cost than $289M each: Reduce car utilization by ensuring other means of transportation are available and viable (at least for people in cities, where the overwhelming majority of the population lives); Automobile collisions have for many years now occupied the #1 or #2 spot among causes of death for children and teenagers, and it's been repeatedly shown that (reasonably designed and built) quality alternative transportation options have *economic* benefits that outweigh their costs, so it's extremely likely that the *effective* cost per life saved would be negative (or at least very low).
@@hoorayimhelping3978well, you also got to enforce them 🤷🏼♂️ And cities alone cant really do anything when other parts of your country give out guns to people like lollipops
@@jasonpatterson8091 ,that’s for Americans to decide. Maybe they should look at how other countries do it because nowhere else has anywhere close to the same problems with school shootings, accidental child gun deaths in the home, or just about any gun issues you can imagine. The U.K. had a mass school shooting about twenty years ago and changed some laws and haven’t had one since. Something similar happened in Australia. Meanwhile American children are being killed by guns every month it seems.
I like how the thumbnail actually perfectly explains the reason. Edit: He changed it, likely because he didn't want it to be fully explained by the thumbnail.
How about this: there is a mechanism that lets you only open one drawer at a time UNLESS you open the bottom drawer, then it disables the mechanism....and the bottom drawer is shaped to prevent tipovers, acting like legs that extend out front.
this is one of those things where i can see both sides. my younger brother pulled out all the drawers on teh dresser, stuck his head in the bottom, and it tipped over on him. i was lucky enough to be in the same room to see it happen and catch the dresser before it tipped all the way over but 6 year old me was stuck holding up that fully wooden dresser for 3 min screaming for help until my dad came in from outside. it was anchored to the wall after that.
@@sittingduhk Mechanically limiting all vehicles to a top speed of 15 miles per hour or banning kitchen knives would save even more lives, but I don't see anybody advocating for that. The question isn't "did it save one life?" it's "how efficient was it at saving lives?" Everything has a cost, which this video illustrates quite nicely.
@@sittingduhkit doesn’t really make sense to make all dressers suck to marginally improve safety though. Just anchor the dresser into the wall if you have kids, I don’t know why they needed to go and create these overbearing regulations when the solution to the problem already exists
Because companies will ignore safety in the pursuit of profit unless they are literally given a guide to prevent them from doing just that. All safety regulations are written in blood.
@@Rekkulani I should probably also mention that my dad is a carpenter and he made the dresser in the first place so these regulations wouldn't have done much. Not that he could read them in the first place (dyslexia)
If it came down to number if child deaths, they just need to prevent one or two school shootings and then they dont need to have dresser regulations. How did the regulations go down this path, when fixing to the wall is the obvious and simple solution? Make a regulation that landlords have to accept the odd hole in the wall from a fixing a dresser to the wall. Maybe a regulation that has each unit include a selection of fasteners for the variety of wall materials. A few screws would be cheaper than all these design work arounds.
@@matthiaswandel I have been operating the pile method for years, the secret is having a smaller cache for frequently used clothing, mine is called ' the chair '
My great-grandfather solved this in 1923 by building a room with all four walls, floor to ceiling, as built-in dressers (with cabinets at the very top). They were part of the construction when he built the house-no separate walls-which meant one of the walls was load-bearing dressers!
that would be very efficient for interior walls, cause the drawers could use the space between studs! and pretty unlikely that the house would tip over on you if you opened all the drawers!
@@matthiaswandel Haha 😂 i had complains about this video but that idea + joke cancelled all my thoutghs❤ screwing to the floor insted of the wall?? ... i had to..
@@matthiaswandelwe had in wall cabinets here but with 2x4 interior studs it is hard to make them useful. You can build a nice dresser into a closet with some creative design work though.
Hi Matthias, I noticed your math only accounts for fatalities or possible fatalities. Perhaps because there is limited data on the matter but I'd be interested to know what the math looks like when it accounts for injuries and disabilities related to furniture tip overs. I would venture to say the numbers rise significantly. A dresser can severely injure a toddler. Heck even an adult! (Personal anecdote) My wife had a large filing cabinet tip over onto her at work. She had neck, shoulder, and back injuries that required xray imaging, pain meds, and months of physical therapy to heal. To this day she's not 100%. All of this was covered by workers compensation. I'm sure states also lobbied for the law to reduce worker comp claims as well? Just my 2 cents.
Our freestanding oven has a C channel fixed to the floor that when pushed back into place engages another bracket to stop the oven tipping forward. This could be easily adopted for drawers.
It seems like the solution is to sell effective dressers that can’t stand on their own, and so have to be attached to the wall. Eventually everyone will think screwing them to walls is normal, like cabinets
A lot of rental properties absolutely forbid tenants from making holes in the walls or floor, and it will cost you your deposit if you do so or even potentially more. Plus, as someone pointed out below, most homes in the US are drywalled, which is not great for anchoring heavy furniture. And tbh, speaking as someone whose spouse works in home repair and fix-its, your average renter/homeowner isn't going to know how to install weight bearing wall mounts properly without either damaging the drywall during installation or having the whole thing pull free the first time the dresser over balances.
@@matthiaswandel : -) the state of idiocy no only prevents one from doing the calculations, but from comprehending the results/implications as well. (sigh)
@@matthiaswandel because your analysis uses implicit statistical conclusions to assume points disingenuously. You can argue for example that the solution is to simply build drawers 8 feet tall that touch the ceiling with said safety measure regulations in place and we'd actually MAKE value therefore justifying the problem. Then when you start comparing children to 289m it becomes exemplary of the quintessential faults of blind pragmatism. Preventing deaths has other values than just the potential costs. There are externalities that can cost people more than something that can be quantified Youre also assuming that people DONT have the space of, according to your calculations, of a 15% larger dresser. And also assume that any object occupying a vacant space in a home directly correlates to its loss in value for the resident due to the sq ft of real estate “lost”. Using your logic, am i saving more money by having a vacant home with nothing in it? Do americans throw value out the window when they buy a bigger couch?
Wow this video was way more entertaining than I thought it would be when I clicked on it, I was hooked the whole time. I love the way you present scenarios, like it's open ended enough that I'm trying to problem solve it in my head before you even finish explaining the issue
A few hundred fatalities over the past 20 years or so. Another way of phrasing that is "in the last 20 years, dresser tip overs have caused as many fatalities as gun violence causes in any 2 consecutive days in the US." I think maybe we have more important fish to fry than outlawing full extension drawer slides on commercial dressers. Although you can solve multiple problems at once, and we probably should make sure that most people can't easily buy dressers that are prone to tipping, since that might endanger toddlers and whatnot.
Agreed on both points. It’s important to put these numbers in perspective. Being crushed by a dresser is a terrible way to go, but so is being shot or killed in a car crash. And the latter two are far more likely!
I think manufacturers also do it to save on materials cost. We purchased a long low dresser that came with a bracket to attach it to the wall. Even so, if you look at the side profile of the drawers (while half-open) the height of the drawer is only like half of the full height of the front panels with 2" margins all around. So it looks like you're getting "wall to wall" storage, but I've noticed you can't actually stack clothing very high at all without it overflowing and possibly affecting the slides or falling out the back of the drawer into the inside of the dresser.
when i was a child i tried climbing an old oak dresser. it fell on top of me, 40 years later i still have the scar on my head. it was a miracle i lived. attach it to the wall or floor.
@@cbalan777 no need to apologize. Im fine and i wouldnt dream of blaming my parents. Kids do stupid things from sticking things into electrical sockets to touching a hot stove. We have laws about electrical safety as well. Sometimes new parents are physically and emotionally overloaded and these sorts of laws at least help in some small way. I will take less storage space in my kids dresser knowing that it wont fall on them.
@@aminorityofoneYour initial comment had the correct lesson, secure the furniture properly. Gimping furniture instead of using it properly is the opposite approach.
People will do stupid things - even smart people. The smartest people recognize this and use engineering to build safer systems. When kids, especially, are injured because they do what kids do, adults are at fault.
Back in the sixties I worked in an office that had steel filing cabinets. When all the drawers were pulled out they tipped over. They still have the same cabinets in offices today.
I still have some of those in my office. Love em. If you don't want children killing themselves don't let them into the room with the dangerous cabinet!!
"Total cost: 2 minutes to find a stud and a couple screws." I disagree. You still have to spend time patching the hole in the wall you put there to find the stud. Yep, had to tell it. 😂
@@AdamBechtol If I were to do a quick job of it, I would likely do the following; 1) use a stud finder to find the stud. 2) take a two inch angle iron, and place double sided tape on the outside of one of the arms. 3) peel off the tape backing, and position it behind the dresser with the non taped arm being positioned against the side of the dresser or on top of the dresser in the back. Slide the dresser against the wall adhering the angle iron to the wall. 4) pull the dresser away from the wall and drive a screw into the wall though the angle iron hole. 5) slide the dresser back into place and drive a screw into the dresser. While this would be a quick job, it's going to take more than 2 minutes.
Matt, I've thought about this for years, and the solution I've come up with is a small plate affixed to the back of the dresser right at floor level on each side of the unit. A 1" screw goes through each plate into the baseboard. It's small, simple, cheap, super strong, and the screw hole is easy to fill if you want to move the unit to a different location.
@matthiaswandel I recently sidestepped the whole issue as you suggested by ditching my dresser and replacing it with a nice cherry shelving unit. Some fabric baskets stand in for your proposed cardboard or wooden boxes. I find that this solution works better, for me, than a chest of drawers.
The best if expensive solution to this problem is built-in furniture. Our older houses had built-in shelves and huge drawers, and I climbed all over them as a kid.
The problem is safety legislation isn't really based on risk management and even to the extent it is it's way more likely to get passed if it makes something really inefficient rather than it makes something actually impossible. So because a home swimming pool cannot be made safe it's okay, but a really bad dresser is safer than a good dresser so you have to have bad dressers to save the children.
@@christophercraig3907 or people can stop putting TVs and other crap on dressers, or actually do their duty and fasten them properly to the walls. Or, you know, their kid could die and they could blame anyone but themselves and then sue some manufacturer.
@@HSkraekelig I don't have a pool and I'm sure it varies by state, but I think in the US it's not illegal for it to not be fenced, but you're liable for anything that happens if it's not. So in practice everyone would fence their pool. But, of course, that's a different situation than dressers where Congress has decided that in my home with no one under 17 I can't have a dresser that uses more than 1/3 of the space because if I had an infant and didn't anchor it it might tip over.
@@christophercraig3907 yes but... maybe you'll have grandchildren some day. Be a shame if one got squashed trying to reach the pretty kitty on Grandpa's dresser.
We've got a regular 'dresser' in our master bedroom (4 drawers high) and a taller chest (5 drawers high). Just wife and me at home. Was in my home office one day, and heard a big crash in the master bedroom. Walked in there to find the chest tipped over and partially laying onto the end of the bed. Turns out the cats hap opened most of the drawers.. I've now installed child-proof (cat-proof too?) locks on the 2 upper levels, and secured it to a wall stud.
@@doxielain2231 Kids aren't stupid. What's really changed is kids today are infantilized. They aren't given space to make safe(non life threatening) mistakes to temper their boldness and reinforce a sense of self preservation. The objective of preventing even the slightest booboo robs them of the opportunity to take small risks that result in small injuries that teach caution.
More like 1.1 dressers per person in the US. Kitchen stoves have an anti tip bracket that screws into the floor and traps one of the back legs and works very very well.
Yes, the way we have linen closets. I've been irritated by closets that have built-in dressers because I can't hang my long dresses. But now I see whey the shelves are being built in and I'm grateful for it, because buying drawers that only partly open would make me murderous.
when I was a kid we had a wardrobe with curtains instead of doors. we would tie the curtains to the bed, then climb the wardrobe shelves to slide down the curtains. Until we ripped the curtain tracks down :D I don't live in the US, but the ikea stuff I bought recently all said it MUST be anchored to the wall. is insisting the unit be anchored a loophole around the law? I have a tall display shelf with glass doors, and without anchoring it to the wall opening the doors tips it over.
Japanese has a lot of creative solutions for that, because of so many earthquakes and most of the houses are rented you can't drill in the walls. They fix a 2x4 in the wall with a adjusting screw system like a Jack post.
@matthiaswandel there is a special metal piece you fit in the end of the 2x4 with a kind of screw Jack. You rotate the screw with a wrench and the screw press a kind of rubber foot in the ceiling.
@@cromyjr1592That's for partitions/doors, and only in very traditional houses; the equivalent of like a Victorian mansion or estate. They mostly use drywall like everyone else.
I was almost crushed by a dresser. My brother kept it from falling over. I would not want to be the person who rides out to tell parent that their kid was dead. All the fancy paper charts wouldn't make that one bit better. i had some ideas for a portable dresser, perhaps I will think of something better. Your leg extension is a good idea.
Ok hear me out, retractable legs that extend out with the motion of any of the drawers. (Anchoring it to the wall for a few cents worth of hardware is definitely the more reasonable option if this is a concern)
@@matthiaswandel I think the idea was that they'd slide out like a thin floor-level drawer (akin to your plywood, but a beveled edge), rather than pincers swinging down form the side.
@@belg4mit so your idea is instead of legs, just have an entire additional floor extend from under the dresser? and you think that somehow won't hit your feet?
What is happening! 😂 This video just appeared on my feed. I had no idea this was a thing (where have I been)? I’m 54 years old. All the dressers in every house I’ve ever lived in were old hand me downs. In all those years I have never seen one fall over. I’ve also never opened all of the draws at once. Also, kids always had child sized dressers in their rooms. I feel like I’ve just stepped into an alternate reality 😅😂. Great video though. Edit: I just checked a couple. None of my dressers have those modern metal slides. So the drawers don’t extend past the opening of the dresser itself like full extension slides allow. This keeps things balanced. Also a couple of my dressers are on casters! So I’m sure that’s not allowed either. And. The drawers get smaller as they go up, so less weight in each drawer the further you go up.
I just stopped using dressers. 20 years ago I built in an armoire along one wall of the bedroom that had drawers in the middle, that couldn't possibly tip over, although I did secure the matching dresser to the wall. Since then my closets always had enough shelf space. Depending on shape, I've used clothes baskets or dollar store storage boxes.
They did a similar thing for cooking ranges / ovens. At least preventing your range from tipping over makes a lot of sense. The first thing I thought of was a French cleat, clearly it is better than just screwing it to the wall. Then I realized, how do you lift a dresser to do that. Maybe you can invent a cleat clamping mechanism for furniture. You put a cleat on the wall, push the furniture over to it, then pull the top drawer out and drop the cleat on the furniture onto the cleat on the wall, tighten it up and it's there until you need to move it... Maybe? Also, I live in California so everything is regulated and expensive... err... I meant we have earthquakes, so not having furniture tipping over blocking exits and pathways is a good idea anyway. If I have anything tall, I find a way to secure it to the wall. Hopefully one can retrofit those drawers with full extension drawer glides and put a cleat thingy on the wall for "safety" When you pulled out drawers it tipped over on you, so it's not completely a dumb thing.
It's pretty simple... you use a block of 1x4 screwed to the wall just below the top height of the dresser,shelf, etc. the back panel is recessed 3/4 inch. put a hole or two in the top at the back and drop a pin through in to a matching hole in the board attached to the wall. no need to lift anything, and won't be dislodged as easily as a french cleat would.
@@johngaltline9933 An interesting idea, but If the dresser can be pushed flush against the wall, how do you reach down to fit the pin in the hole, and even if there isn't that issue to deal with, how do align the holes, and what if you needed to shift the dresser to the left or right does that mean moving the wall hanger? Next is how do you remove the pin to move the dresser? A French cleat allows lateral movement for easy adjustment and can hold a lot of weight along it's length, say 24 inches screwed into 2 studs on the wall. I think would be sufficiently sturdy enough. What do you think?
@@raymitchell9736 First, the pin is dropped in from the top of the dresser. Second, a slot will solve the alignment issue. The cleat does the job, but can come easily dislodged, say by a child bouncing around while climbing, or a second child rocking the dresser. Even for a child it's not exactly difficult to push at the side and tip it up an inch. There's a reason the brackets that come with shelves and dressers screw in and are not just hooks.
@@johngaltline9933 I suppose that could work. But when you have the weight of the dresser pressing down in a French cleat that's anchored into the studs of the wall I don't think it can be dislodged easily. The more weight pressing down, the stronger the connection as long as the wood and anchors are rated for it. On the other hand, if brackets are made of metal and are rated for 100+ lbs., as long as that is also anchored into the studs of the wall and the pins are made to hold the weight then that would work great. Presently I don't have metal working equipment, so I gravitate to the DIY woodworking methods. However if there is a commercial product available that does this, then I'd probably buy it. I don't have a need right now.
@ the product available right now is a 1x4, a saw, a drill, and some 3 inch screws. Assuming you have the base c tools already the part will set you back about five bucks for enough to build two. Cut off two pieces about 2” long and one that is 17”(or one inch longer than however far apart the studs in your walls are. There 24” centers on the interior walls in my house). Set the two small pieces on top of the long one at each end. Drill two holes in each end through both pieces about 1/2 inch from each end. Screw through both pieces in to the stud at each end to attach to wall. Now you got a 14+ inch slot attached to the wall. Even a fully loaded dresser is plenty easy to be tipped and rocked from the sides de if there is nothing preventing it from lifting or moving side to side. It’s a big lever if you push the top. My sister and I got in trouble more than once for scooting a dresser across the floor an inch or two at a time by rocking it side to side.
make a dresser with a wedge at the top that presses against the ceiling (or a dresser that goes all the way to the ceiling so that it can't tip over, and it's even more fun to climb)
In Ireland, on better furniture, a rotating cleat is fixed to the inside of the back panel of the drawer. When rotated up the cleat hits a stop attached to the frame of the drawer unit which stops the drawer coming too far out. If you put your hand into the drawer you can rotate the cleat down and move the drawer further and take it out. The drawers are near enough full depth.
I had no idea. I am 59 years old and live in the US and i have never had a dresser or chest of drawers tip, start to tip, or even be unstable and my dressers are all very old. i was not even remotely aware this was a problem.
It's not the chest of drawers per se, it's kids climbing up them. Ikea started giving out wall anchoring kits about a decade ago after a few kids were killed. Interlocks, weights, limited opening seems a bit overboard but I guess someone figured few would bolt them to the wall. It's also a common problem with mechanics toolboxes, you open a couple of drawers and they tip over. You'd think they'd have enough weight in the other drawers to counter this, but nope. Interlocks there are a good idea.
@@j.f.christ8421I can’t believe anyone can be killed by ikea furniture. It’s all hollow cardboard with fake wood texture stuck to the outside. I can easily carry ikea dressers and bookshelves with one hand.
Your of a generation where you still had to think about your actions and learn from your mistakes to survive. We have put so much into makeing things safe we have managed to breed a more exceptional form of idiot and it's getting harder to proof everything they touch.
There's probably not enough of a market, but it would be nice to have dressers that open fully when you've attached it to a wall. If you had some screw plates inset from the back wall connected to a spring interlock, theoretically when they get screwed to the wall and pulled tight against the wall you could release a mechanism to allow them to open.
There are a couple of flaws in the monetary argument. Firstly, the billions of dollars in real estate costs are not spent by the Government who makes the laws but by the consumers who have to buy the nanny state approved dressers. Secondly, people will not add on to their homes and apartments to accommodate addition nanny state dressers, but will simply make do with more crowed living conditions; so again, Big Government is unaffected by their stupid laws.
You are correct. The billions are not being spent by the Government and most people won't be adding on to their home to maintain the same amount of living space. So the billions of dollars aren't really being spent by anyone. The "stupid nanny law" is really only that so long as it isn't your child, or grandchild that becomes the statistic.
@@mikewatson4644 No, the law is stupid on its face. Did you not watch this video? There are MUCH better and cheaper options than making stupid laws that cost people a bunch of money for relatively little benefit. If my daughter had "become the statistic" when she were small, I would NEVER think to blame the manufacturer of the dresser. That's legitimately stupid.
@@mikewatson4644 It’s a stupid nanny law because it is a great inconvenience to everyone and the total pool of deaths that may be prevented is 13 per year. That is not a big payback, so we are not talking about a law that saves hundreds or thousands every year. In fact if you pop out to the CDC for leading causes of childhood death, it does not even make the graph because it is so low. Cars kill a lot more children. Let’s ban cars, because it is impossible to make them impossible to kill a kid. Drowning kills a lot more kids, let’s ban swimming pools for the same reason.
When I anchor dressers and bookcases to the wall, I use angle brackets that I put with the vertical part facing DOWN. I then add a hole in the back of the item so that I can attach the angle bracket to the underside of the top. That way the anchor is completely hidden.
The obvious "fault" of the cost calculation is that people generally make do with the space they have, they don't acquire an extra 7 square feet in order to fit another dresser. So the calculated costs are just reassignment of the utility of area that already exists, not really extra cost to anyone. Also consider that floor space is being used up by a dresser, but that floor space is replaced by counter top space that can also be used. Whether the counter top space is more or less valuable than the floor space is situational. But I like Mathias, and I like frivolous over analysis, so I'm not actually saying anything bad about the video.
Or design your dresser with an angled front so the base sticks out farther. Yes, you'll lose some space efficiency having shallower drawers at the top, but I imagine it would be less loss overall than having all the drawers throughout the cabinet limited just to keep the thing square.
Great analysis and I really like you elegant solution to attach it to the floor rather than the wall. I'll just add to the conversation that you haven't considered the amount of accidents; I'd guess that for every fatality there are 10 to 20 ER visits (life threatening injuries) and for each of those ER visits another 10 to 20 accidents (broken bones) that cause a parent to miss work for at least a day. I get that those numbers I provide are very rough estimates and acknowledge it doesn't alter your conclusion about the exorbitant costs that the STURDY act places on a life saved.
if the intent is to make a non compliant dresser, the manufacturer is still liable. but you could sell a good dresser that is efficient except for 3 ft of empty space in the back, and if the customer cuts that off, that’s ok.
Americans invented the seat belts, did the research, and yet continue to ignore both. Never in the world of celebrity, reality TV have I ever seen a seat belt used.
Yeah, maybe we should also do something about all these stupid cars too. Alot of countries aren't so reliant on them, and as a result they also have far fewer deaths.
@@johngreydanus2033 "Americans invented the seat belts, did the research, and yet continue to ignore both...." I felt that I had to fact-check that. The first seat belt was invented by English engineer George Cayley in the late 1800s, but it was for glider pilots. The first patented seat belt in cars was by American Edward Glaghorn in 1885, to keep tourists safe in taxis. The modern three-point seat belt was made by Swedish Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin in 1958. So you weren't wrong, but the story wasn't that simple. Incidentally, the first place to _require_ that seat belts be worn at all times in the car was where I live, Victoria, Australia, in 1970.
@@PJRayment Thanks for the fact check, much appreciated, I grew up in Canada but came to Australia in 1972, so have watched car safety evolution over the past 52 years, all the crash testing, with and without dummies. Something to ponder, say some vastly superior alien life arrives on Earth, explain how the road system works, especially the part where opposite traffic is on the same road and occasionally crashes occur, killing the human life forms.
You're assuming that no effort was made to improve motor vehicle safety from 2000-2022. What kind of clown world do you live in where governments only focus on one issue at a time?
Ah yes, the same governments that came up with rules like "grocery stores can only have paper bags that don't have handles". Truly the wisest and most benevolent of entities.
Why cant people just accept that there are always risks in life? I would never rven think of suing the manufacturer of a dresser for any reason whatsoever!
@@fellipec USA has healthcare. Very very expensive healthcare, but it does exist. Given Americans love guns and crap healthcare (no to socialism!), perhaps the horse model would work.
@@fellipec "neither provide healthcare right?" I don't understand. I didn't comment on that part, because that's not (as far as I know) a constitutional issue. And I don't actually get your point in any case. Healthcare is available. Yes, normally at a cost, whether that by the individual, an insurance company, or taxpayers.
When renting, you're typically not allowed to fasten things to the rental if it means making a hole. I have a collection of little brackets I've never been allowed to use.
This is also easier said then done. Sometimes you anchor the furniture because it takes time to teach the kids. There are 2 or 3 years that most children would be deemed suicidal if they had the reasoning of an adult. Climbing dressers behind your back is the kind of thing they do. They don't have the reasoning ability to understand the consequences. Things like anchoring dressers gives parents time to do the teaching without losing a child in the process.
Jaysus ! We only legally have to anchor free standing cookers, because would you believe, people will keep standing on open oven doors !! I suppose it helps if all the hobs are roaring ! With your wall anchoring problem, I think I'd put a board on the wall, you could tart it up with your router, put some sort of moulding on it. I have done this all sorts of ways. Did I say I prefer brick walls ?
Here's a workable solution: repeal the law. Then make people aware of the hazard. There are always more hazards in the loss of liberty than in liberty itself.
My gun safe is anchored to the wall so my guns don’t get stolen. I can’t imagine not being assed to anchor a couple dressers and a bookshelf to the wall to potentially save my daughter’s life. It took less than 10 minutes per piece of furniture. I also like your plywood foot idea. Great stuff. I can’t believe the lack of engineering that went into making these new pieces of furniture compliant. One of our dressers was bought earlier this year. It came with braided steel anchor straps, which I appreciate now knowing what the alternative is, but I just anchored the back directly into a couple studs using L brackets instead.
1:53 I just assembled a cheap Ikea dresser that has this feature except with an added twist; you can only open one drawer at a time, but if you mount it to the wall using the built-in bracket it overrides the system and then you can open all the drawers. They don't pull out as far as I'd like though still...
This is *amazing*, how do they do this?!
@@Ariccio123they have really much money for rnd and huge numbers of items sold so they can come up with really ingenious, really simple but custom solutions to things. I have the same dresser, the attachment plate for the wall pulls on something, that moves the locking mechanism out of the way. I was really impressed, when I assembled it.
@Ariccio123 Look at 'Cabinet Interlock' mechanisms. By using linkages, you can allow one drawer to open, and opening it moves a rod that runs the height if the cabinet that locks all other drawers. When the drawer is returned, the rod moves back and allows another drawer to be opened.
Same mechanism is used in toolboxes.
That's incredible. I had no idea those existed. I immediately thought of the locked drawers Matthias mentions later in the video and thought that would already be a decent solution, but with the disabling mechanism, it's perfect.
@@Ariccio123ikea has an animation video of how it works on their website.
Decades ago I had a very acrobatic male cat who loved climbing bookcases. He weighed twenty pounds so his explorations were a problem. He never was injured. But when a bookcase fell over (caught by the sofa) a vase and some knickknacks got broken. I ended up anchoring everything to the wall using screws and strong picture wire. A very simple and basic fix that I should have done earlier.
I own an office furniture business and these regulations have been present in this industry for quite some time. I always have to explain to customers not to try and move their 4 tier lateral files on their own because they have a series of weights in the bottom along the back wall of the cabinet, and it is quite heavy. Most file cabinets now also have a drawer locking rod so you can only open one drawer at a time. It's basically just a bar with a series of pins and the bar will drop the pins into a gap on a little platform on each drawer once one is open.
This year I bought a little under-desk cabinet on wheels for my office at home and almost couldn’t get it up the stairs on my own, I had to go step by step. Being able to fully open the drawers is kind of a luxury, but I really appreciate it - I just won’t ever carry it downstairs again, it’s married to the apartment now.
Real, proper office furniture is a different world - I paid € 175 for that thing and was unhappy about it at first, but they start at € 580 when you buy them new, and although we can debate whether that’s justified or not, they really are built to an insanely high standard.
Sorry you have to deal with all that regulatory nonsense
It's the cost of litigation, not necessarily the cost of a life. The drawers are not being childproofed, they've been made lawyer proof.
Just having disclaimer that it has to be screwed to the wall before use should suffice?
@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulezikea tried that and it didn’t work
@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez Not necessarily. Imagine you are a juror and the plaintiff's layers show you thousands of reports that the company received regarding their dressers injuring and killing kids despite all dressers being delivered with securing straps. Then they show you designs that the company created internally by engineering department that prevent tip-overs. The lawyer will say something like "would you stand on the side of the road selling lemonade year after year with a sign that said 'this ice might choke you' knowing that the ice was still killing kids despite your sign? Or would you change the design of the ice to the safe ice the FIRST time a death occurred." Now remember that most civil cases never go to court in the first place.
People in America are allergic to taking personal responsibility. How can you sue a company for a piece of furniture falling on you because of the way YOU used it?!?
@@snower13 An incredibly cynical perspective, and a massively over-exaggerated scale of the problem.
I just added earthquake straps to a bookcase and an upright freezer today. It took less than half an hour to install with drywall anchors, brackets, and steel cabling. Cost was
*_ALL_* kids are climbers! ;-)
I hope you use some damn good anchors of you weren't going into studs. Drywall plugs won't do much.
@@nitePhyyre Now we're getting to the heart of the matter. People aren't doing things wrong, the culture has created an uneducated people.
Culture has encouraged us to stop thinking. _“Not thinking”_ has made us assume drywall is a safe and secure anchor when it's not.
Attack the culture, and you'll find lots and lots of things start getting fixed.
@@nitePhyyre depends on the type of plug you use..... there are ones that have wings that open up when you tighten the screw.
While they won't take as much weight as screwing into a stud, they take more than a simple plug.
Drywall is not load bearing. Find the studs. @@Andy-fd5fg
I love when the algorithm drops an interesting and educational video in my feed. I got a new dresser a couple years ago and wondered why the drawers didn't completely open. I thought it was because it was cheap and from IKEA lol
Here in the UK, shelves and dressers come with l-brackets and instructions to screw it to the wall. My guess is any attempt to sue would counter with "you didn't follow the safety instructions".
Same for the USA. Maybe we should be suing the landlords for refusing to return the deposit because "holes in walls".
@@snower13 Landlords should be compensated for damage, thinking ~5¢ per screw hole. "Here’s a quarter, keep the change." 😂 (IOW agree)
@@snower13the act calls for an anchoring kit as well as the other requirements. We live in an area subject to earthquakes, so anchoring has long been an” common- sense imperative (not a law). Of course, installing anchors (whether supplied or added) requires a certain amount of skill, which may be beyond the average dresser-buyer. For example, we installed a 2x4 batten attached to the studs to anchor 5’ pantry cabinets. Screw lengths, sizes - our best guess.
Why try to sue anybody? People have just to use there fagging brains. 🤦🏻
IKEA even did less, just some sturdy ribbon and some screws to attach the it to the wall
My wife and I were wondering why dressers have such small drawers and don't open far!! This is so frustrating!
now you know
In these scenarios, it's safe to assume that it's the fault of the government. It's probably right at least 90% of the time.
You would be surprised how many of life's little inconviences and absolute disasters can be traced back to those worse than useless MFs in DC.
@@turbocactus44 darn, the government trying to stop kids from dying
@@turbocactus44 Isn't it more the fault of people who didn't supervise their children well enough for this to be a needed thing? Saying that saving children's lives is a fault is a bit weird.
A wall anchor seems so much simpler than any other solution and I can completely ignore that step since there are no toddlers in the house.
Yup. UK here. Bought a kids storage unit and it had a strip of canvas, screws and plugs. As we have kids I did fit it and was impressed with the strength of the fixings and strap. Couldn’t pull it over with most of my strength.
Unsure why this solution shouldn’t be enough for everywhere, as it works extremely well. Screwing into the floor is not suitable in some houses but wall screwing nearly always will be.
@@lawrencemanning yes but houses in America have a lot of drywall which doesn’t exactly make the best anchoring point, add onto that whatever electrical circuits, plumbing, and insulation may be hidden behind said drywall and the ‘simple solution’ becomes a lot more complicated
Lots of rental places forbid making holes in the walls and you will lose your deposit if you do.
@@sonipitts easy ordinance fix by preventing that prohibition in lease terms when it comes to safety anchors. Protects the owners too since usage decisions would be entirely on the tenant.
@@Boxygirl96_Properly installed_ electrical wiring and plumbing are not at risk from wallboard anchors.
Eighteen years ago, when we bought our dresser set, the only set we agreed looked nice was the plain cherry colored set with black stone tops. They weigh a ton. They also don’t tip over. The only thing in the set without a granite top is the tall dresser. The top of this dresser has smaller, side-by-side drawers in two rows at the top. That would also help prevent tipping (unless you opened them all). I don’t remember ever getting anti-tip hardware with a dresser. I guess I am just old.
If the manufacturer specifies that the dresser needs to be anchored to the wall and you ignore that, you should not be able to sue, if you can the liability laws must be changed rather than regulating dressers. Whats next, sueing the electrical company because you died putting your tongue into a socket?
In fairness, if you died, you wouldn’t be bringing suit against anyone. I would feel sorry for the person who discovered the body as the “What the ??? was s/he doing” questions would have no answers.
That is certainly next. You just wait and see.
Manufacturer's liability should not be able to be dismissed by making instructions or warnings which are predicatly not followed by the end user for any reason. And I'm not referring to just drawers but everything in general. Compenies would 100 % abuse a system like that to save money.
Is that a thing? Socket licking? I need to get out more often.
Given that most modern homes are required to have child safe outlets, pretty much 😅
Granted I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, just sucks that most builders will put in the cheapest compliant outlets they can find, which almost all suck and will fail to the point you can't plug anything into them pretty quick. Ironically I'm more likely to get shocked by trying to force a plug into a stuck safety outlet than shoving something foreign in the outlet (though of course I'm not a stupid child, just a stupid adult)
I got a kid recently and we are screwing the dressers to the wall. Patching up a hole in the wall is not a big deal in my opinion.
You "got a kid" recently? The FBI would like to know your location.
Was it a black Friday deal?
Do you want some more?
Are you going to keep it?
What does it eat?
I got a cold recently, do you know where you got yours from?
I honestly wonder if this is an issue harming renters the most. Patching a hole works if it doesn't cost you thousands in deposit.
Do you sell plans for a high quality illegal dresser?
Better built yours with the dimension you need and the drawer slides you can get.
Now I envision Matthias sneaking up in a long trenchcoat, opening it and showing deep pockets with rolls of paper plans in them, whispering:
"heeeey, looking for some extra deep drawers..?"
I reported this comment to the CPSC. (Just kidding).
If it wasn't for the incoming tariffs, maybe Matthias could contraband in illegal dressers through Canada? 😅
Maybe if you found a dresser/chest of drawers that you like the appearance of, you could make deeper drawers for it?
That way, you already have the carcass, at least the drawer fronts and maybe some slides, so about 50% (ish) is already done.
Step 1) screw a cleat to the floor. Whatever kind of cleat you feel competent to make and install.
Step 2) slide the dresser's receiver over the cleat. The dresser is now anchored and won't tip over, but is easily slid back out again to fetch whatever fell behind it.
that is exactly what they do for ovens
@@coreysuffield Not in Australia, but a cleat is a pretty simple idea. I'll have to keep that in mind.
probably easier to install than trying to find a stud, for your american cardboard houses.
@@zaxmaxlax why all the hate for platform framing ? It's not required by law you can build a house from virtually any material you can afford in the US. It's the most common because when properly done platform framing has many advantages including earthquake resistance and lower cost than most other methods.
@@alexlail7481 Im not hating but matter of fact it IS required by law in pretty much 90% of the US since you need permits and inspections for construction.
5:32 Ahahaha 🤣💕👍
PS- I think putting these lightweight dressers on carpet vs hard flooring really makes a huge difference in tip overs too.
This is infuriating because we DO anchor our dressers to the wall (because well, duh, we want our small kids to survive), but we can't buy new ones that can hold our clothes. So we're just using plastic totes now.
4:32 60 million adults building their own dressers just added 150,000 emergency room visits and 1000 deaths to your calculus.
hmmm… good point there!
😂
Nonsense
I am 68 years old and NEVER had a dresser falling over.
Let alone killing somebody.
Neither did I ever heard somebody who had it happening to them.
@@Spikejwh1happened to my kids when they were 4 and 3. They opened all the drawers and climbed them like stairs. No one was killed though. Not even hurt.
Yes, but adult deaths dont make sensational news stories like children deaths. And given the current social media attitude towards men, it may even be welcomed.
came for the info, stayed for the tripping hazard demo
I guess I’m the exception, but I just attached my dressers to the wall. I’d rather spend half a day once making sure my furniture is safe, than my kids turning into statistics.
...and if you move one of those dressers, a screw hole or 2 in the wall is pretty easy to patch. Far easier than cleaning blood out of the carpet.
Same here, everything that could tip is fastened to a wall, be with with a properly sized screw, L brackets or the flat bits of fabric Ikea provides.
With the concrete walls, it’s also a nice excuse to bust out the SDS+ hammer drill 😎
same here.
I understand where you are coming from but I don't have kids and don't intend to so I don't even bother.
We live in earthquake country. Everything is strapped to the wall.
Ten years ago I made a dresser for my boys that also functions as stairs for their bunk bed. The top drawer is a foot deep and each drawer gets deeper as they go down. The bottom is so deep we keep extra blankets in it. It’s the most stable thing I’ve ever made 😁
That is genius, I want 4 of them, make it into a Ziggurat!
Sweeeeet!
I built my sons dresser/changing table when he was born. I always had tipping in mind but i built it 24” deep and made entirely of oak. Things a beast with 0 percent chance of ever tipping.
Sounds solid, and like something that can be passed down. Also, I read this in Ron Swanson's voice.
Yea I went looking at ikea for a new dresser about a month ago. Nearly every review was someone complaining about how far the drawer opens.
Or don't open
I think it was an IKEA dresser that was one of the main reasons these changes/regulations were put in place. There's a whole documentary on it.
@@mattdworaczyk1884 Because Ikea is big enough to go after after failing to attach it to the wall, politicians jump on that band wagon for some more vote while protecting the children!
Several solutions come to mind, but most of them are in jest. The useful suggestion would be to have L-shaped, corner dressers with drawers opening at 90 degrees to each other. One half stabilizes the other half. Yeah, you have that dead space in the corner, but I'm sure someone could regulate a use for that (or maybe include a lazy susan $$$).
On the lighter side...
Consider nudism.
Can you strap the toddler to the wall or floor instead?
Can you strap 60 pounds of weight to the toddler? If that doesn't prevent climbing, then the climber should be sturdy enough to survive.
Takata airbags?
NERF furniture?
Build a ladder on the short side to encourage safe climbing. But then you might need a safety rail, climbing harness and such.
Thanks for the info. A great reason to save your old furniture and thrift antiques to avoid newly constructed rubbish.
I'm surprised we're still allowed to have knives to be honest.
Pretty sure the UK already dealt with that one. Next, they'll take away cars, because of how many people a vehicle can run over. Maybe by doing something like raising the price of automobiles to the same price as houses, tax the fuel sky high, then force people to live in cordoned off areas 15 minutes across.
Oh, wait....
In one area of China, people must have a barcode engraved to identify the owner when buying a kitchen knife. Funny thing is, the US now has more surveillance cameras per capita than China.
Relatedly, in 1669, King Louis XIV of France banned sharp, pointed knives in an attempt to reduce violence. This has persisted to this day in the form of rounded table knives.
@@zoyadulzura7490 Actually, I do think I remember seeing that on "Today I found out"'s channel...very interesting!
Wait, you are still allowed to have knives?! I knew that psychiatrist was just playing me!
Lol. I get what you are saying though.
I have no idea whatsoever what we in the US could do in order to save lives at a lower cost than $289M each. None. None at all...
Effective gun laws?
@@juliebrooke6099 What is an "effective" gun law? Of the ten most dangerous cities for gun violence, 8 or 9 of them have extremely stringent and restrictive gun laws.
One way to save lives at a lower cost than $289M each: Reduce car utilization by ensuring other means of transportation are available and viable (at least for people in cities, where the overwhelming majority of the population lives); Automobile collisions have for many years now occupied the #1 or #2 spot among causes of death for children and teenagers, and it's been repeatedly shown that (reasonably designed and built) quality alternative transportation options have *economic* benefits that outweigh their costs, so it's extremely likely that the *effective* cost per life saved would be negative (or at least very low).
@@hoorayimhelping3978well, you also got to enforce them 🤷🏼♂️
And cities alone cant really do anything when other parts of your country give out guns to people like lollipops
@@jasonpatterson8091 ,that’s for Americans to decide. Maybe they should look at how other countries do it because nowhere else has anywhere close to the same problems with school shootings, accidental child gun deaths in the home, or just about any gun issues you can imagine. The U.K. had a mass school shooting about twenty years ago and changed some laws and haven’t had one since. Something similar happened in Australia. Meanwhile American children are being killed by guns every month it seems.
I like how the thumbnail actually perfectly explains the reason.
Edit: He changed it, likely because he didn't want it to be fully explained by the thumbnail.
How about this: there is a mechanism that lets you only open one drawer at a time UNLESS you open the bottom drawer, then it disables the mechanism....and the bottom drawer is shaped to prevent tipovers, acting like legs that extend out front.
An ASTM standard, F2057-19 that mentions tipover states that the dresser can't be supported by an opened drawer.
Seems a silly standard. OP has a great idea that could save lives and increase usability.
Many tool boxes are already made this way
The dressers in my room as a kid did have the "only 1 drawer open at a time" feature. Not sure why that isn't used much anymore.
Here in New Zealand, we are recommended to fasten Dressers (and other tall furniture) to the wall or floor for Earthquake stability reasons.
Same in California. We have latches on kitchen cabinets to keep the glass off the floor. Book cases and dressers are strapped, as are water heaters.
this is one of those things where i can see both sides. my younger brother pulled out all the drawers on teh dresser, stuck his head in the bottom, and it tipped over on him. i was lucky enough to be in the same room to see it happen and catch the dresser before it tipped all the way over but 6 year old me was stuck holding up that fully wooden dresser for 3 min screaming for help until my dad came in from outside. it was anchored to the wall after that.
Thats the thing with these kind of rules, they arent popular but they absolutely save lives.
@@sittingduhk Mechanically limiting all vehicles to a top speed of 15 miles per hour or banning kitchen knives would save even more lives, but I don't see anybody advocating for that. The question isn't "did it save one life?" it's "how efficient was it at saving lives?" Everything has a cost, which this video illustrates quite nicely.
@@sittingduhkit doesn’t really make sense to make all dressers suck to marginally improve safety though. Just anchor the dresser into the wall if you have kids, I don’t know why they needed to go and create these overbearing regulations when the solution to the problem already exists
Because companies will ignore safety in the pursuit of profit unless they are literally given a guide to prevent them from doing just that. All safety regulations are written in blood.
@@Rekkulani I should probably also mention that my dad is a carpenter and he made the dresser in the first place so these regulations wouldn't have done much. Not that he could read them in the first place (dyslexia)
If it came down to number if child deaths, they just need to prevent one or two school shootings and then they dont need to have dresser regulations.
How did the regulations go down this path, when fixing to the wall is the obvious and simple solution? Make a regulation that landlords have to accept the odd hole in the wall from a fixing a dresser to the wall. Maybe a regulation that has each unit include a selection of fasteners for the variety of wall materials. A few screws would be cheaper than all these design work arounds.
Or do what do find an unused corner of the room and throw everything into a huge pile, messy but so cheap it's free.
and VERY space efficient, so long as you can keep the pile from spreading too much. Just hard to do any sort of random access with this method.
Bonus points for having small amounts of clothing that is all interchangeable so grabbing types is all you need to do.
@@matthiaswandel I have been operating the pile method for years, the secret is having a smaller cache for frequently used clothing, mine is called ' the chair '
Husbands prefer this method however most wives do not, and you will do things her way.
I just hang up all my shirts/pants. Socks and such in a plastic 'dresser' but could easily be any number of cheap, light storage things.
You can also install a stick to the back that jams against the ceiling if tilted.
@mughat That is a novel if Slighty ugly solution .
A tall mirror if you are worried about the stick.
My great-grandfather solved this in 1923 by building a room with all four walls, floor to ceiling, as built-in dressers (with cabinets at the very top). They were part of the construction when he built the house-no separate walls-which meant one of the walls was load-bearing dressers!
that would be very efficient for interior walls, cause the drawers could use the space between studs! and pretty unlikely that the house would tip over on you if you opened all the drawers!
@@matthiaswandel
Haha 😂 i had complains about this video but that idea + joke cancelled all my thoutghs❤
screwing to the floor insted of the wall??
... i had to..
@@matthiaswandelwe had in wall cabinets here but with 2x4 interior studs it is hard to make them useful. You can build a nice dresser into a closet with some creative design work though.
@@matthiaswandel With American houses not impossible though
@@ddnaveh screwing to the floor is actually quite sensible, but people are insane and care more about their carpet
"If only there was something we could do!" -quote from someone not following basic safety guidelines
Hi Matthias, I noticed your math only accounts for fatalities or possible fatalities. Perhaps because there is limited data on the matter but I'd be interested to know what the math looks like when it accounts for injuries and disabilities related to furniture tip overs. I would venture to say the numbers rise significantly. A dresser can severely injure a toddler. Heck even an adult! (Personal anecdote) My wife had a large filing cabinet tip over onto her at work. She had neck, shoulder, and back injuries that required xray imaging, pain meds, and months of physical therapy to heal. To this day she's not 100%. All of this was covered by workers compensation. I'm sure states also lobbied for the law to reduce worker comp claims as well? Just my 2 cents.
THE PANTOROUTER HOOKED ME - THE LOGISTICS OF FURNITURE FOOTPRINTS TO LIVES SAVED KEEPS ME COMING BACK
Why are you SHOUTING? 😅
Yeah, I was curious why old mate is shouting as well 😂
YOU WILL HAVE TO SPEAK UP I CANT HEAR YOU
@@DoctaMidNite Out of curiosity, how old are you?
@@jsjs6751 TYPE LOUDER
Our freestanding oven has a C channel fixed to the floor that when pushed back into place engages another bracket to stop the oven tipping forward. This could be easily adopted for drawers.
It seems like the solution is to sell effective dressers that can’t stand on their own, and so have to be attached to the wall. Eventually everyone will think screwing them to walls is normal, like cabinets
That would be easy to make, just make them without the front legs. ON the other hand it would be a royal PITA to transport.
A lot of rental properties absolutely forbid tenants from making holes in the walls or floor, and it will cost you your deposit if you do so or even potentially more. Plus, as someone pointed out below, most homes in the US are drywalled, which is not great for anchoring heavy furniture. And tbh, speaking as someone whose spouse works in home repair and fix-its, your average renter/homeowner isn't going to know how to install weight bearing wall mounts properly without either damaging the drywall during installation or having the whole thing pull free the first time the dresser over balances.
Thanks!
You rule, Matthias! My dad was an aerospace engineer and this is exactly the kind of analysis he'd do to show someone they were being an idiot.
But read the comments. The analysis doesn't appear to work on idiots.
@@matthiaswandel : -) the state of idiocy no only prevents one from doing the calculations, but from comprehending the results/implications as well. (sigh)
@@matthiaswandel because your analysis uses implicit statistical conclusions to assume points disingenuously. You can argue for example that the solution is to simply build drawers 8 feet tall that touch the ceiling with said safety measure regulations in place and we'd actually MAKE value therefore justifying the problem. Then when you start comparing children to 289m it becomes exemplary of the quintessential faults of blind pragmatism. Preventing deaths has other values than just the potential costs. There are externalities that can cost people more than something that can be quantified
Youre also assuming that people DONT have the space of, according to your calculations, of a 15% larger dresser. And also assume that any object occupying a vacant space in a home directly correlates to its loss in value for the resident due to the sq ft of real estate “lost”. Using your logic, am i saving more money by having a vacant home with nothing in it? Do americans throw value out the window when they buy a bigger couch?
Wow this video was way more entertaining than I thought it would be when I clicked on it, I was hooked the whole time. I love the way you present scenarios, like it's open ended enough that I'm trying to problem solve it in my head before you even finish explaining the issue
A few hundred fatalities over the past 20 years or so. Another way of phrasing that is "in the last 20 years, dresser tip overs have caused as many fatalities as gun violence causes in any 2 consecutive days in the US." I think maybe we have more important fish to fry than outlawing full extension drawer slides on commercial dressers. Although you can solve multiple problems at once, and we probably should make sure that most people can't easily buy dressers that are prone to tipping, since that might endanger toddlers and whatnot.
Agreed on both points. It’s important to put these numbers in perspective. Being crushed by a dresser is a terrible way to go, but so is being shot or killed in a car crash. And the latter two are far more likely!
People in California often secure tippy furniture to walls (earthquake-proof).
Change the culture: start calling _earthquake-proof_ anything _“earthquake and child-tipping proof”_ and expand everyone's attention and awarenesses.
I think manufacturers also do it to save on materials cost. We purchased a long low dresser that came with a bracket to attach it to the wall. Even so, if you look at the side profile of the drawers (while half-open) the height of the drawer is only like half of the full height of the front panels with 2" margins all around. So it looks like you're getting "wall to wall" storage, but I've noticed you can't actually stack clothing very high at all without it overflowing and possibly affecting the slides or falling out the back of the drawer into the inside of the dresser.
Had a set of drawers fall on me as I was climbing when I was little... I got told off lol
Learned your lesson and moved on. Ain't common sense grand?
@@mattcullen8269 Depends, is Welshman commenting from the afterlife?
@@mattcullen8269 He had to go through it to learn the lesson though. For some kids they do that and they don't learn a lesson, they die.
Classic blaming the victim
Seriously, glad you got through it.
when i was a child i tried climbing an old oak dresser. it fell on top of me, 40 years later i still have the scar on my head. it was a miracle i lived. attach it to the wall or floor.
I'm sorry that happened to you.
@@cbalan777 no need to apologize. Im fine and i wouldnt dream of blaming my parents. Kids do stupid things from sticking things into electrical sockets to touching a hot stove. We have laws about electrical safety as well. Sometimes new parents are physically and emotionally overloaded and these sorts of laws at least help in some small way. I will take less storage space in my kids dresser knowing that it wont fall on them.
@@aminorityofone I hope you learned a lesson from that incident and that you will never again climb the dresser !
@@aminorityofoneYour initial comment had the correct lesson, secure the furniture properly. Gimping furniture instead of using it properly is the opposite approach.
People will do stupid things - even smart people. The smartest people recognize this and use engineering to build safer systems. When kids, especially, are injured because they do what kids do, adults are at fault.
Back in the sixties I worked in an office that had steel filing cabinets. When all the drawers were pulled out they tipped over. They still have the same cabinets in offices today.
I still have some of those in my office. Love em. If you don't want children killing themselves don't let them into the room with the dangerous cabinet!!
4:09 I was just going to say that. Just... attach the dresser to the wall or the floor...
Attaching *all* shelf and dresser units to the wall; it's an earthquake thing.
Total cost: 2 minutes to find a stud and a couple screws.
"Total cost: 2 minutes to find a stud and a couple screws."
I disagree.
You still have to spend time patching the hole in the wall you put there to find the stud.
Yep, had to tell it.
😂
@@scotttovey I agree with with you, this is more than a 2 minute job. Assuming you can reach in the drawer to screw it to the wall.
@@AdamBechtol
If I were to do a quick job of it, I would likely do the following;
1) use a stud finder to find the stud.
2) take a two inch angle iron, and place double sided tape on the outside of one of the arms.
3) peel off the tape backing, and position it behind the dresser with the non taped arm being positioned against the side of the dresser or on top of the dresser in the back. Slide the dresser against the wall adhering the angle iron to the wall.
4) pull the dresser away from the wall and drive a screw into the wall though the angle iron hole.
5) slide the dresser back into place and drive a screw into the dresser.
While this would be a quick job, it's going to take more than 2 minutes.
This is a huge example of "ideas have consequences" - thank you!
0:39 🤦 they've got to stop naming things like that. but they won't.
Lmao, they really do. 😂
Matt, I've thought about this for years, and the solution I've come up with is a small plate affixed to the back of the dresser right at floor level on each side of the unit. A 1" screw goes through each plate into the baseboard. It's small, simple, cheap, super strong, and the screw hole is easy to fill if you want to move the unit to a different location.
@matthiaswandel I recently sidestepped the whole issue as you suggested by ditching my dresser and replacing it with a nice cherry shelving unit. Some fabric baskets stand in for your proposed cardboard or wooden boxes. I find that this solution works better, for me, than a chest of drawers.
I can see that being the future, basically the exact same functionality as a good dresser
The best if expensive solution to this problem is built-in furniture. Our older houses had built-in shelves and huge drawers, and I climbed all over them as a kid.
Now that you mention it, I'm surprised homes are even allowed to have swimming pools if old-fashioned dressers are illegal...
The problem is safety legislation isn't really based on risk management and even to the extent it is it's way more likely to get passed if it makes something really inefficient rather than it makes something actually impossible. So because a home swimming pool cannot be made safe it's okay, but a really bad dresser is safer than a good dresser so you have to have bad dressers to save the children.
@@christophercraig3907 or people can stop putting TVs and other crap on dressers, or actually do their duty and fasten them properly to the walls. Or, you know, their kid could die and they could blame anyone but themselves and then sue some manufacturer.
I'm pretty sure that in Canada, outdoor pools have to be fenced. It's ok if your kids drown, but the neighbour's kids have to be protected :)
@@HSkraekelig I don't have a pool and I'm sure it varies by state, but I think in the US it's not illegal for it to not be fenced, but you're liable for anything that happens if it's not. So in practice everyone would fence their pool. But, of course, that's a different situation than dressers where Congress has decided that in my home with no one under 17 I can't have a dresser that uses more than 1/3 of the space because if I had an infant and didn't anchor it it might tip over.
@@christophercraig3907 yes but... maybe you'll have grandchildren some day. Be a shame if one got squashed trying to reach the pretty kitty on Grandpa's dresser.
We've got a regular 'dresser' in our master bedroom (4 drawers high) and a taller chest (5 drawers high). Just wife and me at home. Was in my home office one day, and heard a big crash in the master bedroom. Walked in there to find the chest tipped over and partially laying onto the end of the bed. Turns out the cats hap opened most of the drawers.. I've now installed child-proof (cat-proof too?) locks on the 2 upper levels, and secured it to a wall stud.
Lawyers are forcing a culture of stupid proof and that increases costs.
First they made people more stupid, since kindergarten, then they force the "stupid-proof" - some people make money out of that.
Yes, but kids are just stupid. Especially little ones.
Gov't is at fault. Gov't could simple pass a law that you cannot sue the mfg, retailer, or anyone if a dresser tips over.
@@guytech7310 It's not fault, it works just as intended.
@@doxielain2231 Kids aren't stupid. What's really changed is kids today are infantilized.
They aren't given space to make safe(non life threatening) mistakes to temper their boldness and reinforce a sense of self preservation.
The objective of preventing even the slightest booboo robs them of the opportunity to take small risks that result in small injuries that teach caution.
More like 1.1 dressers per person in the US.
Kitchen stoves have an anti tip bracket that screws into the floor and traps one of the back legs and works very very well.
Maybe best to start building drawers or shelves into the houses. If a toddler can tip the wall over, you probably have bigger problems.
Yes, the way we have linen closets.
I've been irritated by closets that have built-in dressers because I can't hang my long dresses. But now I see whey the shelves are being built in and I'm grateful for it, because buying drawers that only partly open would make me murderous.
This is good information to know. Since people are not capable of attaching dressers to wall or floor, we now get limited function dressers.
5:20 best acting i've seen in woodworking youtube!
Get this man an Oscar!
@@MrQuickLine Is that the name of the new IKEA dresser/workbench combo unit? :-)
when I was a kid we had a wardrobe with curtains instead of doors. we would tie the curtains to the bed, then climb the wardrobe shelves to slide down the curtains.
Until we ripped the curtain tracks down :D
I don't live in the US, but the ikea stuff I bought recently all said it MUST be anchored to the wall. is insisting the unit be anchored a loophole around the law?
I have a tall display shelf with glass doors, and without anchoring it to the wall opening the doors tips it over.
Japanese has a lot of creative solutions for that, because of so many earthquakes and most of the houses are rented you can't drill in the walls. They fix a 2x4 in the wall with a adjusting screw system like a Jack post.
if you can't even drill holes in the walls, how would you get a 2x4 into the wall? Let alone connect to it?
@matthiaswandel there is a special metal piece you fit in the end of the 2x4 with a kind of screw Jack. You rotate the screw with a wrench and the screw press a kind of rubber foot in the ceiling.
Their walls are made of paper.
American walls are made from paper and dust.
@@cromyjr1592That's for partitions/doors, and only in very traditional houses; the equivalent of like a Victorian mansion or estate. They mostly use drywall like everyone else.
As a person with hardwood floors I am shocked at the idea of screwing anything to the floor.
This is a good lesson on opportunity cost.
I see some 200 kids slain by dressers in the last 20 years. Some 300 people per year are slain riding bicycles EVERY YEAR.
I guess dressers are an easier target than guns are for laws to prevent deaths. I open carry at least 4 dressers in my house 😮
We'd need a National Dresser Association to take up the cause.
Surely guns are not dangerous....
In memory of a great Fawlty Towers episode: Don't mention the gun laws!
@@waterboy8999 Guns, not so dangerous, people, yes, quite dangerous.
They are, because there's no law which can be used to protect unnecessarily dangerous dressers from regulation
I was almost crushed by a dresser. My brother kept it from falling over.
I would not want to be the person who rides out to tell parent that their kid was dead. All the fancy paper charts wouldn't make that one bit better.
i had some ideas for a portable dresser, perhaps I will think of something better. Your leg extension is a good idea.
Ok hear me out, retractable legs that extend out with the motion of any of the drawers. (Anchoring it to the wall for a few cents worth of hardware is definitely the more reasonable option if this is a concern)
those legs would poke you in the bare feet when you open a drawer in the morning to get some clothes out.
Really cool idea
@@matthiaswandel I think the idea was that they'd slide out like a thin floor-level drawer (akin to your plywood, but a beveled edge), rather than pincers swinging down form the side.
@@belg4mit so your idea is instead of legs, just have an entire additional floor extend from under the dresser? and you think that somehow won't hit your feet?
What is happening! 😂 This video just appeared on my feed. I had no idea this was a thing (where have I been)? I’m 54 years old. All the dressers in every house I’ve ever lived in were old hand me downs. In all those years I have never seen one fall over. I’ve also never opened all of the draws at once. Also, kids always had child sized dressers in their rooms. I feel like I’ve just stepped into an alternate reality 😅😂. Great video though.
Edit: I just checked a couple. None of my dressers have those modern metal slides. So the drawers don’t extend past the opening of the dresser itself like full extension slides allow. This keeps things balanced. Also a couple of my dressers are on casters! So I’m sure that’s not allowed either. And. The drawers get smaller as they go up, so less weight in each drawer the further you go up.
Years ago I gave up on dressers in favor of lateral filing cabinets. Much better at clothing storage.
I just stopped using dressers. 20 years ago I built in an armoire along one wall of the bedroom that had drawers in the middle, that couldn't possibly tip over, although I did secure the matching dresser to the wall. Since then my closets always had enough shelf space. Depending on shape, I've used clothes baskets or dollar store storage boxes.
They did a similar thing for cooking ranges / ovens. At least preventing your range from tipping over makes a lot of sense. The first thing I thought of was a French cleat, clearly it is better than just screwing it to the wall. Then I realized, how do you lift a dresser to do that. Maybe you can invent a cleat clamping mechanism for furniture. You put a cleat on the wall, push the furniture over to it, then pull the top drawer out and drop the cleat on the furniture onto the cleat on the wall, tighten it up and it's there until you need to move it... Maybe?
Also, I live in California so everything is regulated and expensive... err... I meant we have earthquakes, so not having furniture tipping over blocking exits and pathways is a good idea anyway. If I have anything tall, I find a way to secure it to the wall. Hopefully one can retrofit those drawers with full extension drawer glides and put a cleat thingy on the wall for "safety"
When you pulled out drawers it tipped over on you, so it's not completely a dumb thing.
It's pretty simple... you use a block of 1x4 screwed to the wall just below the top height of the dresser,shelf, etc. the back panel is recessed 3/4 inch. put a hole or two in the top at the back and drop a pin through in to a matching hole in the board attached to the wall. no need to lift anything, and won't be dislodged as easily as a french cleat would.
@@johngaltline9933 An interesting idea, but If the dresser can be pushed flush against the wall, how do you reach down to fit the pin in the hole, and even if there isn't that issue to deal with, how do align the holes, and what if you needed to shift the dresser to the left or right does that mean moving the wall hanger? Next is how do you remove the pin to move the dresser? A French cleat allows lateral movement for easy adjustment and can hold a lot of weight along it's length, say 24 inches screwed into 2 studs on the wall. I think would be sufficiently sturdy enough. What do you think?
@@raymitchell9736 First, the pin is dropped in from the top of the dresser. Second, a slot will solve the alignment issue. The cleat does the job, but can come easily dislodged, say by a child bouncing around while climbing, or a second child rocking the dresser. Even for a child it's not exactly difficult to push at the side and tip it up an inch. There's a reason the brackets that come with shelves and dressers screw in and are not just hooks.
@@johngaltline9933 I suppose that could work. But when you have the weight of the dresser pressing down in a French cleat that's anchored into the studs of the wall I don't think it can be dislodged easily. The more weight pressing down, the stronger the connection as long as the wood and anchors are rated for it. On the other hand, if brackets are made of metal and are rated for 100+ lbs., as long as that is also anchored into the studs of the wall and the pins are made to hold the weight then that would work great. Presently I don't have metal working equipment, so I gravitate to the DIY woodworking methods. However if there is a commercial product available that does this, then I'd probably buy it. I don't have a need right now.
@ the product available right now is a 1x4, a saw, a drill, and some 3 inch screws. Assuming you have the base c tools already the part will set you back about five bucks for enough to build two.
Cut off two pieces about 2” long and one that is 17”(or one inch longer than however far apart the studs in your walls are. There 24” centers on the interior walls in my house). Set the two small pieces on top of the long one at each end. Drill two holes in each end through both pieces about 1/2 inch from each end. Screw through both pieces in to the stud at each end to attach to wall. Now you got a 14+ inch slot attached to the wall.
Even a fully loaded dresser is plenty easy to be tipped and rocked from the sides de if there is nothing preventing it from lifting or moving side to side. It’s a big lever if you push the top. My sister and I got in trouble more than once for scooting a dresser across the floor an inch or two at a time by rocking it side to side.
Very thorough, comprehensive, well thought-out. I like all the additional options as well.
make a dresser with a wedge at the top that presses against the ceiling (or a dresser that goes all the way to the ceiling so that it can't tip over, and it's even more fun to climb)
In Ireland, on better furniture, a rotating cleat is fixed to the inside of the back panel of the drawer. When rotated up the cleat hits a stop attached to the frame of the drawer unit which stops the drawer coming too far out. If you put your hand into the drawer you can rotate the cleat down and move the drawer further and take it out. The drawers are near enough full depth.
I had no idea. I am 59 years old and live in the US and i have never had a dresser or chest of drawers tip, start to tip, or even be unstable and my dressers are all very old. i was not even remotely aware this was a problem.
It's not the chest of drawers per se, it's kids climbing up them. Ikea started giving out wall anchoring kits about a decade ago after a few kids were killed.
Interlocks, weights, limited opening seems a bit overboard but I guess someone figured few would bolt them to the wall.
It's also a common problem with mechanics toolboxes, you open a couple of drawers and they tip over. You'd think they'd have enough weight in the other drawers to counter this, but nope. Interlocks there are a good idea.
@@j.f.christ8421I can’t believe anyone can be killed by ikea furniture. It’s all hollow cardboard with fake wood texture stuck to the outside. I can easily carry ikea dressers and bookshelves with one hand.
Your of a generation where you still had to think about your actions and learn from your mistakes to survive. We have put so much into makeing things safe we have managed to breed a more exceptional form of idiot and it's getting harder to proof everything they touch.
There's probably not enough of a market, but it would be nice to have dressers that open fully when you've attached it to a wall. If you had some screw plates inset from the back wall connected to a spring interlock, theoretically when they get screwed to the wall and pulled tight against the wall you could release a mechanism to allow them to open.
There are a couple of flaws in the monetary argument. Firstly, the billions of dollars in real estate costs are not spent by the Government who makes the laws but by the consumers who have to buy the nanny state approved dressers. Secondly, people will not add on to their homes and apartments to accommodate addition nanny state dressers, but will simply make do with more crowed living conditions; so again, Big Government is unaffected by their stupid laws.
You are correct. The billions are not being spent by the Government and most people won't be adding on to their home to maintain the same amount of living space. So the billions of dollars aren't really being spent by anyone. The "stupid nanny law" is really only that so long as it isn't your child, or grandchild that becomes the statistic.
@@mikewatson4644 No, the law is stupid on its face. Did you not watch this video? There are MUCH better and cheaper options than making stupid laws that cost people a bunch of money for relatively little benefit. If my daughter had "become the statistic" when she were small, I would NEVER think to blame the manufacturer of the dresser. That's legitimately stupid.
@@mikewatson4644 It’s a stupid nanny law because it is a great inconvenience to everyone and the total pool of deaths that may be prevented is 13 per year. That is not a big payback, so we are not talking about a law that saves hundreds or thousands every year. In fact if you pop out to the CDC for leading causes of childhood death, it does not even make the graph because it is so low. Cars kill a lot more children. Let’s ban cars, because it is impossible to make them impossible to kill a kid. Drowning kills a lot more kids, let’s ban swimming pools for the same reason.
When I anchor dressers and bookcases to the wall, I use angle brackets that I put with the vertical part facing DOWN. I then add a hole in the back of the item so that I can attach the angle bracket to the underside of the top. That way the anchor is completely hidden.
The obvious "fault" of the cost calculation is that people generally make do with the space they have, they don't acquire an extra 7 square feet in order to fit another dresser. So the calculated costs are just reassignment of the utility of area that already exists, not really extra cost to anyone.
Also consider that floor space is being used up by a dresser, but that floor space is replaced by counter top space that can also be used. Whether the counter top space is more or less valuable than the floor space is situational.
But I like Mathias, and I like frivolous over analysis, so I'm not actually saying anything bad about the video.
Or design your dresser with an angled front so the base sticks out farther. Yes, you'll lose some space efficiency having shallower drawers at the top, but I imagine it would be less loss overall than having all the drawers throughout the cabinet limited just to keep the thing square.
why not make the drawers so they only hold 1 lb of weight, then break apart, like made of balsa wood?
Even better, make them so they don't open in the first place!
@@matthiaswandel you have the best sense of humor!
cover the drawers in baby oil so they're impossible to climb
Great analysis and I really like you elegant solution to attach it to the floor rather than the wall.
I'll just add to the conversation that you haven't considered the amount of accidents; I'd guess that for every fatality there are 10 to 20 ER visits (life threatening injuries) and for each of those ER visits another 10 to 20 accidents (broken bones) that cause a parent to miss work for at least a day.
I get that those numbers I provide are very rough estimates and acknowledge it doesn't alter your conclusion about the exorbitant costs that the STURDY act places on a life saved.
business opportunity, sell dresser kits that are not intended to be, but can be assembled in a way to fully utilize the volume
if the intent is to make a non compliant dresser, the manufacturer is still liable. but you could sell a good dresser that is efficient except for 3 ft of empty space in the back, and if the customer cuts that off, that’s ok.
As long as they are only 80 percent complete they are legal.
Maybe make a stabilizing foot that comes out with the drawers
All that effort put into furniture, in the 2000 to 2022 period, roughly 880,000 died in motor vehicle accidents. Clown world!
Americans invented the seat belts, did the research, and yet continue to ignore both. Never in the world of celebrity, reality TV have I ever seen a seat belt used.
Yeah, maybe we should also do something about all these stupid cars too. Alot of countries aren't so reliant on them, and as a result they also have far fewer deaths.
@@johngreydanus2033
"Americans invented the seat belts, did the research, and yet continue to ignore both...."
I felt that I had to fact-check that.
The first seat belt was invented by English engineer George Cayley in the late 1800s, but it was for glider pilots.
The first patented seat belt in cars was by American Edward Glaghorn in 1885, to keep tourists safe in taxis.
The modern three-point seat belt was made by Swedish Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin in 1958.
So you weren't wrong, but the story wasn't that simple.
Incidentally, the first place to _require_ that seat belts be worn at all times in the car was where I live, Victoria, Australia, in 1970.
@@PJRayment Thanks for the fact check, much appreciated, I grew up in Canada but came to Australia in 1972, so have watched car safety evolution over the past 52 years, all the crash testing, with and without dummies. Something to ponder, say some vastly superior alien life arrives on Earth, explain how the road system works, especially the part where opposite traffic is on the same road and occasionally crashes occur, killing the human life forms.
You're assuming that no effort was made to improve motor vehicle safety from 2000-2022.
What kind of clown world do you live in where governments only focus on one issue at a time?
Also you can make leg extensions from metal, so they can be made both sturdy and flat, so less of the tripping hazard
Ah yes, the same governments that came up with rules like "grocery stores can only have paper bags that don't have handles". Truly the wisest and most benevolent of entities.
What’s wrong with a full width french cleat on the wall? Also stops small things and paper falling down the back.
Why cant people just accept that there are always risks in life? I would never rven think of suing the manufacturer of a dresser for any reason whatsoever!
because people want someone to blame and its a easy money in the land of the lawsuits.
I blame the massive over population of lawyers looking for work.
Once insurance companies are involved, litigation is nearly guaranteed.
What would an interlocking system that allows you to open any two drawers look like?
Very complicated
USA is such a place... They do this kind of laws to "protect kids life" but will not ban guns or pay their healthcare even for the same reason.
At least now they'll be safe climbing the dresser to get to the gun the top drawer.
Banning guns is not an option for them. Otherwise perhaps they would.
@@PJRayment neither provide healthcare right?
@@fellipec USA has healthcare. Very very expensive healthcare, but it does exist. Given Americans love guns and crap healthcare (no to socialism!), perhaps the horse model would work.
@@fellipec
"neither provide healthcare right?"
I don't understand. I didn't comment on that part, because that's not (as far as I know) a constitutional issue. And I don't actually get your point in any case. Healthcare is available. Yes, normally at a cost, whether that by the individual, an insurance company, or taxpayers.
When renting, you're typically not allowed to fasten things to the rental if it means making a hole. I have a collection of little brackets I've never been allowed to use.
How about if parents learned their kids not to climb dressers?
This is also easier said then done. Sometimes you anchor the furniture because it takes time to teach the kids.
There are 2 or 3 years that most children would be deemed suicidal if they had the reasoning of an adult. Climbing dressers behind your back is the kind of thing they do. They don't have the reasoning ability to understand the consequences.
Things like anchoring dressers gives parents time to do the teaching without losing a child in the process.
Jaysus ! We only legally have to anchor free standing cookers, because would you believe, people will keep standing on open oven doors !! I suppose it helps if all the hobs are roaring !
With your wall anchoring problem, I think I'd put a board on the wall, you could tart it up with your router, put some sort of moulding on it. I have done this all sorts of ways. Did I say I prefer brick walls ?
Here's a workable solution: repeal the law. Then make people aware of the hazard. There are always more hazards in the loss of liberty than in liberty itself.
Huh... Today I learned. I always wondered why both of my previous dressers sucked at doing the one thing they should have been good at doing.
My gun safe is anchored to the wall so my guns don’t get stolen. I can’t imagine not being assed to anchor a couple dressers and a bookshelf to the wall to potentially save my daughter’s life. It took less than 10 minutes per piece of furniture. I also like your plywood foot idea. Great stuff. I can’t believe the lack of engineering that went into making these new pieces of furniture compliant. One of our dressers was bought earlier this year. It came with braided steel anchor straps, which I appreciate now knowing what the alternative is, but I just anchored the back directly into a couple studs using L brackets instead.