If you've got kids, you know crocs. They're infamous for their bright colors. But these popular shoes are now becoming known for something else.
Victims say they pose a potential danger because these soft shoes are no match for the moving stairs of an escalator.
They're the shoes you see on kids everywhere. But you’ve never seen them like this: bloody, battered and torn to shreds, along with the little toes inside.
That’s what can happen when these famous shoes with the crocodile logo are bitten by the teeth of an escalator. Kim Armstrong saw it happen to her son, Reese. She says, “I tried to pull him out. I didn't know what was happening. I thought he jammed his foot in there and I couldn't get it out."
Armstrong knows the panic that comes from hearing your child cry out in pain. She heard it on a trip to the mall two years ago, when she says Reese’s Crocs were sucked into an escalator, ripping apart his shoe. Reese says, “My two front toes, they were the hurt ones. But the three other toes, they were perfectly okay."
It was a close call. But others have not been as lucky, including a 6-year-old boy whose big toe was mangled after it was caught in an escalator at an aquarium last year. Attorney Andrew Laskin is representing the family of that boy as well as several others.
He says, "The only reason some children lose a toenail and some children are losing toes is purely a factor of how quickly the child screams and how quickly the parent is able to pull the child to safety."
But Laskin knows some kids are not pulled to safety in time. He represents the families of eight children injured after their Crocs got stuck in escalators.
He says four have already settled with the company, four others have lawsuits pending, claiming the company knew the potential risks but didn't say anything. Laskin says, "The reality is parents do not know of this danger and most of them are not finding out until it's too late."
Video from the Japanese Trade Ministry (METI) shoes how easily it can happen. Their agency began studying escalator entrapments after an accident sparked 66 complaints in just a few months.
But legal documents from cases against Crocs show the company knew of more than 230 incidents involving their shoes around the world. And one email supplied to us by Laskin shows the company received complaints as far back as July of 2005.
The subject heading in that email says simply, "another escalator story". Still Laskin says the company did little to investigate, "If crocs knew of 235 of these incidents and never inspected one escalator or interviewed any of the parents to find anything out, than it's worse than negligence. It's a willful failure to warn."
The company has long said their shoes are safe and not to blame for these types of accidents. But they started a public safety awareness campaign last year, two years after Croc's co-founder sent a letter to a customer telling them the company would be adding escalator safety tags to the shoes, possibly by the holiday rush.
That was September of 2006. And even though those tags were added to Crocs in Japan last year, you still won't find them here. But you will find warning signs posted by airports and shopping centers, letting parents know they should be extra careful.The Consumer Product Safety Commission has been spreading the same message. Spokeswoman Patty Davis says, "Soft-sided shoes are more pliable, more malleable, so they're more prone to get stuck in an escalator."
The CPSC can’t talk specifically about Crocs, but the agency says its numbers show escalator entrapments are rare, with billions of rides going off without a misstep every year. In a 2008 letter to the CPSC, Crocs is quick to emphasize that despite adding millions of its company’s shoes to the marketplace in recent years, there's been no increase in the escalator entrapments. But there have been a few serious injuries.
It’s pain Laskin thinks could have been prevented, "This is not a case of an inadequate warning. This is a case of no warning at all."A warning is all Kim Armstrong would ever ask for from the company. She's never filed a lawsuit and never even asked Crocs to replace her son's chewed up shoes.
All she wants is for parents to know what can happen. She says, "I'm not saying Crocs shouldn't sell Crocs. That would be ridiculous. I'm just saying, tell people. Tell people there's a potential bad connection between Crocs and escalators."
We asked the company specifically about the allegations made in the cases against them but a Crocs spokesperson told us, “We cannot comment on the majority of your questions as they relate to matters that are at issue in pending litigation.”
The company did tell us they are attentive to the reports of escalator incidents although "they are convinced that our shoes have neither created nor increased the rate of such incident".
The company believes the most important safety factor is safe riding behavior. Their rep says, “Parents should supervise and assist children.
Riders of all ages should step on and off escalators and moving walkways with caution, stand only in the middle of the steps, hold on to the handrail and ensure feet and loose clothing are clear of steps and sides.”
