 Wait, Brooke, you forgot your lunch. Oh, I never forgot something. You all be very careful around... Sure, there's cause for concern for this mother about her children's safety and traffic. But a lot of her worry has been lessened by the knowledge that bicycles are a lot safer than ever before. The major reason is the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. It tests not only bicycles, but a wide range of consumer products to bring about a margin of safety. This morning, we're going to take a look at skateboards, take a look at the hazard analysis, the economic data, the engineering data, and our resource requirements and our budgetary needs for this fiscal year. Don has the injury picture looked. Well, Bill, there were about 106,000 injuries reporting during the past year through emergency rooms, of which about half those were children between 10 and 14 years old. Generally, how serious are the injuries? About a third were fractures. Serious injuries are greatly reduced as a result of long-range work, such as studies of product injury trends, product standards, and public information programs. Our daily routines are varied in scope, but we are all committed to reducing or eliminating unreasonable risks of injury caused by unsafe consumer products. Often by working with the manufacturer and the consumer, we can eliminate the causes of injuries, thereby making recalls, bands, or mandatory standards less likely. Here, technicians are conducting a test to determine the flammability of children's sleepwear. Unfortunately, accidents do happen. When they do, we want to know as many of the details as possible. Terminals like this have been placed in selected hospital emergency rooms throughout the country. When a hospital receives an emergency room patient with an injury involving a consumer product, pertinent details about the person, the product, and the injury are entered into the terminal and fed to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. This computer network, called NICE, is our problem-detecting tool. It helps us determine which products are associated with various injuries. Close to one half million reports are tabulated annually, representing a cross-section of consumer product-related injuries created in emergency rooms. The evaluation process doesn't stop here. CPSC investigators often visit with victims and their families to find out first-hand exactly what did happen. About 7,000 cases are investigated annually by commission field and contract personnel. Their reports assist us in determining the product hazard under which conditions the injury is most likely to occur. Information gathered from all sources helps set the commission's priorities. We can then decide which problems to attack first. Testing is an essential part of the commission's work. We may have a product type that has caused many accidents. We know it is unsafe. A series of comprehensive tests are conducted to identify the exact problem. Once this is accomplished, we continue testing to find the most appropriate ways to eliminate or reduce the hazard. These technicians aren't testing the product. They are testing the test procedures. Before issuing a mandatory standard, we examine our own test standards. This particular sequence is examining bicycle brake performance. Marker guns are used to determine how long it takes to stop from a speed of 15 miles per hour. Through our information hotlines, our written materials, and media campaigns, we're helping consumers become more safety conscious. When people actively look for product safety in the things they buy, manufacturers respond by making safer products. One of the most far-reaching actions the commission can take is to issue a mandatory safety regulation, such as we've done on bicycles. Requests to set standards or ban products come about in several ways. Some we initiate ourselves. Others come in the form of petitions from groups or interested individuals. Now when a petition for a standard or ban is received, the staff researches the issue before the commission decides whether to begin to develop a rule. Once a standard is issued, all products of that type, after the effective date, must meet the specifications in the standard. Good morning. I'm Pat Jenkins. I'm an investigator with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Investigators visit retailers and manufacturers regularly. It's part of their job to examine products in the marketplace to see that they comply with the commission's regulations. So you see, if you put together all of the activity that goes on here at the commission, you get a flow. Data collection, analysis, strategy setting, product testing, development of standards, and public information. People all trying to anticipate problems and stop them before they can occur. It's a very difficult and time-consuming assignment. We think we've made a good start. And progress? Well, it's one of our most meaningful accomplishments. Thanks to the people at CPSC, thousands of product-related injuries and deaths were prevented last year. This film has been brought to you by the people of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.