TIL miniblinds with pull cords to raise and lower them are now illegal to sell in the United States

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.

I used to think it was "only" toddlers. Tragic stories of 12 year olds dying from the pull cords. Fucking horrible.

Well to be fair, they are annoying as hell to operate.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Ah yes, miniblinds are the real threat... not school shootings

If they're illegal to sell, then Amazon hasn't gotten the memo yet.

Witness the horror replacing it

Natural selection is dead.

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.

Unrelated to blinds but my friend told me about having hanging Christmas cords. Her car cat made a wrong jump and she came home to a dead cat. She was 5. I am trauma'd.

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?

This seemed like such an arbitrary law that I went looking for it and apparently it's a small committee (4 persons*) rule that was poorly substantiated. The rule itself has been shot down by an appeals court in 2023, but the industry obviously had already set plans in motion to change their product line ups.

"On September 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the CPSC’s rule on custom window coverings. The court agreed with WCMA that CPSC failed to provide an opportunity to comment on the underlying incident data, conducted a flawed cost-benefit analysis that ignored the enormous harm that the rule would have caused the multibillion-dollar custom window coverings industry, and selected an arbitrary effective date for the rule. The CPSC acknowledges that the industry will need at least 2 years to develop completely new products. So the six-month effective date would make it impossible for the window covering industry to create proven safe replacement products."

https://suncoastblinds.com/understanding-the-cpsc-rule-on-window-coverings-and-the-appeal/

• I'm not from the USA, so to me it seems very weird that this is how decisions with far reaching consequences are taken. In the eu legislation like this gets putten through the wringer in the eu Commission, probably also voted on by the eu Parliament, and then still given years preparation time and back and forth between industry/lobby groups/government. But instead this was: 4 non elected people take a vote and those 4 see no issue with a 6 month deadline. Wth, what a rugpull this would have been for the industry.

Edit to add: that rule that lost in appeal in 2023, was from November 2022, so maybe it does go in effect in november 2024, since it seems like that timetable was the biggest issue for the industry. Just speculating though, can't look it up atm.

I don't have kids so can I have other stuff that might be bad for them around my house?

Well that’s depressing.

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.

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.