Human Factors Gone Awry - Why Current Efforts Fail To Adequately Address Suffocation Hazards of Infant Sling Carriers

Abstract

Infant sling carriers are hands-free, fabric carrying devices used to secure an upright or reclined infant to a caregiver. With traditional, unstructured slings, safety depends solely on the wearer’s use and knowledge of how to wrap an infant onto the caregiver, since safety is not passively designed into the product. In recent years, semi-structured slings with seemingly simple instructions began being marketed to make slings easier to use. However, infants younger than 4 months of age are suffocating in both unstructured and semi-structured slings. This paper describes research undertaken to identify factors contributing to suffocation, explains why efforts to improve product usability instead created new suffocation hazards, why better warnings and instructions fail to adequately address these hazards, and thus why the government and industry should adopt more effective options to address this deadly hazard.