CPSC Reform Act

Floor Speech

CPSC REFORM ACT -- (Senate - March 05, 2008)

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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I rise today to oppose the DeMint amendment No. 4124 and explain why the garage door safety provision in the Consumer Product Safety Reform Act is really important.

Garage doors inherently pose a risk to families, particularly small children who could be crushed by the doors. The doors often weigh more than 300 to 400 pounds. Many families open and close them a lot of times during the course of a day. The 12 inches between closing the door and the floor, they call it the crush zone. A tremendous amount of force is generated as gravity pulls this 300- or 400-pound door down and it starts to come to the floor of the garage. This crush zone is a real risk for children, particularly small children. Small children live close to the ground--we all know that--and they are always in the crush zone when they are near a garage door.

For some time, this has been a serious risk. In the 1970s and 1980s, 67 deaths caused by garage doors were reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and there were even more serious injuries. Most of these were caused by entrapment under the door.

Congress stepped in and passed legislation in 1980 that included a garage door safety standard requiring that doors have what is called an external secondary entrapment device. We directed Underwriters Laboratory to modify its standards. We gave it the force of a product safety rule.

The primary device most often is the drivetrain of the garage door. When there is an obstruction in the door's path, the drivetrain reverses. So if the door is coming down and senses something, it goes back up. In other words, when the door hits a person or object, the drivetrain will reverse. Unfortunately, this primary device does not always do the job adequately. That is why Congress required a secondary device to protect consumers.

The secondary device deployed by garage door installers for the past 15 years has been an optical sensor. This is technology that anyone who has owned a garage door over the last 15 years is familiar with. If you do not know it, go home and take a look. When your garage door comes up, look down at the bottom near the guide on one of the sides of the garage door, and you will see a tiny little photosensor light. It is like a beam of light. It is trained on another receptor on the other side of the garage door opening. It creates this photosensor. If you walk across that between those two devices, you trip it, and the garage light usually goes on, and the garage door knows someone is there, don't let the door come down.

We are trying to make this standard so no matter what kind of mechanical device you have that brings the door down, you are always going to have the secondary noncontact sensor. The door does not have to hit me in the head to turn around. I can trip it by walking through that doorway and breaking that photosensor light.

Senator DeMint wants to eliminate that safety requirement. He believes it is unnecessary. First, let's put it in perspective, if we can.

How much do you think those little light devices cost? The answer? Five dollars. That is what it costs to buy those two little photosensors, one on each side of your garage door.

How much does a garage door cost? It is about $200 or $300 for the device to move it up and down. You can pay up to $1,000 for the whole door; $5 for the photosensor to save the child who is walking into the garage versus the $1,000 for the door. Is it worth it? If it is my kid, it is worth it. If it is my grandson, it is worth it. If it is about the neighbor's kid whom I dearly love, too, it is worth it.

Well, Senator, you didn't tell us how much it costs to install it. It turns out it costs $15 to install it--$20 total cost for this safety device on a $1,000 garage door, and Senator DeMint says we don't need it.

Underwriters Laboratory that he quotes, in fairness to him, has been in the midst of deciding whether we move away from the photosensor to not requiring it. But they come out with a minimum requirement for safety.

What I am suggesting is, it is worth 20 bucks to every garage door owner and installer in America and to every family to have the peace of mind of this safety. Is it worth one kid's life, $20? I think it is worth a lot more. I think it is worth a lot for us to include it, and I am glad it is in the bill.

The secondary device deployed by garage door installers, as I said, for 15 years has been this optical sensor. It is not new, questionable technology. It works. I have seen it work on my own garage in Springfield, IL. I wondered why the garage door wouldn't come down. Finally, I figured it out. The optical sensor lights were not tracking on one side. A simple little adjustment, and everything worked fine. The minute I crossed those lights, the garage door mechanism knew not to close. When an object breaks the beam, the garage door reverses.

Since this requirement has first been put into effect, during the last 15 years, injury and fatality rates by garage doors have dropped dramatically--dramatically. An ounce of prevention, that is what we are talking about here, a $20 expense to make sure a child is not injured or crushed by a 400-pound garage door coming down.

The Underwriters Laboratory standard for garage doors was modified in the late 1990s to allow for a new type of technology to serve as the secondary device. That technology, like the primary device, required direct contact. The problem with this standard is it relies entirely on contact when an effective, inexpensive system that does not require context exists.

Underwriters Laboratory is a fine organization. I have worked with them over the years, and I really believe they do a good job. But they do not provide maximum protection. They provide minimum protection. This bill, asking for another $5 device and $20 total cost, is going to provide even more protection for families.

Who supports this bill? Who supports this amendment that Senator DeMint wants to strike? The Consumer Federation, the Consumers Union, U.S. PIRG, and Public Citizen. Those four are the leading groups on consumer safety in America today.

None of them work for any companies. They work for the common good, for families across America, trying to make sure safety and consumer interests are protected. They joined in a joint letter saying they support the language that is both appropriate and protective of consumer safety and that a noncontact sensor is a valuable safety requirement.

I know my friend has offered this amendment in good faith, but I would tell him, I believe that requiring this photosensor and protecting kids who might wander into this crush zone is not too much to ask. I would rather vote for this and have somebody say it is belt and suspenders than to have on my conscience that we walked away from this tiny, almost insignificant cost to the garage door, than lose a child's life in the process. That would be something which would be hard for me to reconcile.

So I urge my colleagues to join the leading consumer groups across America, join the cause of common sense, and be willing to put a $20 cost onto a garage door and possibly protect the life of an innocent child.

I yield the floor.

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