Because at least 4 million baby walkers are still in homes and more than 1 million are sold each year, the Greater Houston Coalition for SAFE KIDS recently helped launch a nationwide initiative to get parents to exchange their mobile walkers for safer, stationary alternatives. Inc. SAFE KIDS' goal is to protect the nearly 20,000 children who wind up in emergency rooms each year with baby walker-related injuries, which can include concussions and broken bones and teeth. Most injuries occur when children fall down stairs. Although new voluntary safety standards for walkers have been issued to help prevent falls, they do not remove all the risks. Due to their increased mobility, small children in walkers are also able to pull down containers of hot liquid, food or heavy appliances, ingest poisonous substances, suffocate and drown.
Parents think their child is safe in a walker, as long as an adult is close by.
In more than half of all baby walker injuries, parents or caregivers were in the same room with the child when the injury occurred.