TIL miniblinds with pull cords to raise and lower them are now illegal to sell in the United States
TIL miniblinds with pull cords to raise and lower them are now illegal to sell in the United States
Replacing a broken set of blinds in my house and apparently no one sells the old standard kind where you pull the cord to raise them, I guess because kids and/or pets could tangle in the cord? Bit of an education in miniblinds today.
I didn't even realize they were called "mini"blinds until I moved in to my current place and there was some kind of rule that mentioned them. I'd only heard them referred to as "blinds" my entire life up to that point. This implies the existence of larger blinds
which I've yet to see.Edit: I've definitely seen them. Apparently my brain is underclocked today.
Do the vertical giant blinds count as regular blinds or are those the large version? Link
I'd always heard them called "Venetian blinds", compared to roller blinds.
I used to think it was "only" toddlers. Tragic stories of 12 year olds dying from the pull cords. Fucking horrible.
12 year olds
How in tf‽
Climb on couch to get at cord. Fall. Cord wraps around neck.
Edit: Remember 12 year oldscan stillbe ~60 lbs and curtains tend to be screwed into the fame.
A little pull and tug with a bit of airway constriction?
Ooh, an interrobang
I know a family whose baby hung themselves on the cord. Must be common enough that they just banned them.
I've never understood why they had more than 1 string for a set of blinds, it's not like anybody wants to raise only one corner of it?
My experience has been that stringless blinds are the Landlord Special of window covering, they suck ass and barely raise up if you don't get the individual "blades" perfectly horizontal.
Little trick I figured out as a kid in case you ever have the string blinds again (also, never seen stringless):
Cut a string to the same length as the two coming out of the blinds, snip the little plastic cap off the two attached to the blinds, and braid the three strings together, tie at the end. Never pull unevenly again.
You can't braid them together, they won't go through the take-up mechanism when you drop them closed. I tried wrapping one with the same idea in mind and had to sit and unwrap them because I couldn't close them anymore.
You could just braid the bottom and set the braid with a knot, but that's basically what the knot at the end and the cap do.
You can also just leave the cap intact, and and just tie the end of the cord in a knot to keep the strings together. Just loop it around itself and poke the end through the loop and tighten it to make the knot sit near the end of the cord.
The two strings is so that you can keep them level when one side inevitably wears slightly longer than the other.
Well to be fair, they are annoying as hell to operate.
I thought it was a myth that kids got tangled up in the cord until my kid did it. Thank God I was standing near by.
About 9 children die every year , strangled by mini blinds. 3500 children are killed by guns every year.
Why did we only fix the most unlikely one?
Probably because there isn't a giant mini blind lobby, and people plastering stickers all over their pickup trucks yelling about their mini blind rights.
gun violence isn't an engineering problem. miniblind cords are.
There's no amendment protecting mini blinds.
Car accidents are the leading cause of death in children. When are we going to ban the damn cars???
Ah yes, miniblinds are the real threat... not school shootings
If we can only solve one problem at a time, then climate change is the only problem that matters.
If we skip that one the rest solve themselves
Ah yes, let's get the consumer product safety commission on the problem of school shootings. Hell, since they are so able to ban the way blinds chords are setup, why aren't they ending climate change? The genocide of palastinians? I for one demand the consumer product safety commission do it's fucking job and reform the American policing system.
That is the only kind I know of. How does the other kind work?
Edit: should have been more specific; the string ones are the ones I know of.
The ones I put up in my house have a high tension spring inside the top. When you want to raise the blinds you lift them up when you want to lower the blinds you pull them down. They're not fantastic but they work well enough. You have to kind of coax them to go up lift them up a few times but then again mine were the cheapest Walmart had available
I also use the cheapest Walmart ones and they’re fine - much better than the “try 15 angles till you find the right one” cords. The trick is to raise them slowly and gingerly so that you’re not just bunching up the blinds.
My favorite thing about them is the snap-on installation. No more sketchy slide-in plastic cubes with a plastic cover. Just drill the metal clamp on and snap them in. Surprisingly sturdy.
I actually didn’t know the old style was “illegal.” I just thought they were so unpopular that they replaced them, even at the most basic option.
I’ve got the Ikea version of these and they work great, no coaxing at all. Way easier than that stupid pull cord, I would never go back. Put them up all over the house. One of them went slightly crooked and I never did figure out why or how to fix it though. I think I will eventually get some higher quality replacements anyway.
By some mechanism I don't quite understand, you just grab the lower bar and either lift up or pull down.
We use honeycomb blinds here. You can get them in partially transparent or blackout. They are spring-loaded, and you really can't use them wrong, pull them up or down as fast or as crooked as you want.
You lift them from the bottom and there is a system of gears and springs (citation needed) that assist with them being raised and hold them in place.
Pull them down from the bottom and they come down (with some resistance).
When my cat was a baby she got tangled by the neck in a blinds cord, thankfully I was right there, but it scared the shit out of me. I rent, and still (and everywhere else I've lived) have corded blinds, but the cords are now rolled up and tied to the top so they're out of the way. This kind of regulation is a good thing.
Many cats die every year from them actually, just like children. I am super vigilant about hiding mine out of the way so ours can't see them to play with because I'm terrified of it happening. I really just need to replace them, but they're the nice heavy wooden white ones and throwing them out seems like such a waste.
Anything is lethal when you give it to a million people. This is the main reason I take issue with pointing out individual examples of for example autonomous vehicle crashes and treating that as an evidence for why they're inherently dangerous. Almost nothing is 100% safe. I bet there are dozens of people suffocating to their pillows each year.
Are you saying we should not have safety regulations just because we can't make everything 100% safe?
Remember, if something can't be 100% improved, all improvement is worthless!
Nothing is ever 100% safe. Risk assessment is a big part of federal regulations. (See refs at JSTOR and NCBI) One of the key questions is what is the cost/benefit balance for a product. Kitchen knives are hazardous, but it's very hard to cook without them, so they balance heavier on the benefit side despite the risks. Radithor is all risk and no benefit, so it was an easy decision to ban it.
The point ContrarianTrail was making is that there is some risk in nearly everything. People have died as a result of garden tools, cars, house pets, shaving, buckets, toothpicks, baseball, etc. Here's a list. The part he left out is the cost/benefit analysis. I prefer pull cords on my blinds, and I find the new regulations annoying. But I guess some federal agency decided they aren't so useful that it's worth the risk to children. And it would be selfish to be all upset about it if it saves some child's life.
So by your logic if a collision from bicycle or even from people running isn't 100% safe, then it's as dangerous as car?
Nope.
Also, if you have mini blinds made in the 70s, they're full of lead
i guess that explains why i haven't see them in years
They just installed some in our new office. Guess it’s time to somehow choke myself on them and get a phat check.
Okay but if you get stuck, at least try to get in one good asphyx-e-wank on your way out.
Is there an app for that?
Unrelated to blinds but my friend told me about having hanging Christmas cords. Her
carcat made a wrong jump and she came home to a dead cat. She was 5. I am trauma'd.I know what you were trying to write, but I am still picturing your friend as 5 yr old, speeding her car over a ramp so bad, it caused her cat miles away at home to die in shock.
Unrelated to blinds but my friend told me about having hanging Christmas cords. Her car made a wrong jump and she came home to a dead cat. She was 5. I am trauma'd.
Typo strikes again!
I remember my dad bought some for his house and they didn't have the pullstrings. I remember thinking that was so neat because the pullstring ones were always a pain in the ass to raise/lower.
External Venetian blinds are the best, but I think they aren't so popular in the US from what I heard?
In the US nearly every window that opens has a screen in it to keep insects out. That's why venetian blinds have gone out of favor in the past 70 years.
Maybe miniblinds specifically? I bought nice Bali brand blinds from Home Depot a few months ago, and those hdad pull cords.
They're a lot thicker than mini blinds though. Not sure why it matters for the cord. A kid could strangle on the Bali cord easier than with a cheaper set.
