The Safety Commission Told Parents to Stop Using the Peloton Tread+ After a Child Died. Peloton Called the Warning Inaccurate and Misleading, Then Recalled 125,000 Machines Eighteen Days Later.

On 17 April 2021, the Consumer Product Safety Commission told the public to stop using the Peloton Tread+ if there were children or pets in the house. The commission does not usually do this. It has the authority to issue a unilateral warning without a company's agreement, and it has historically preferred not to, because the ordinary path — a negotiated recall — is faster and less adversarial.

The commission also released video footage of a child being pulled underneath one of the machines. A month earlier, Peloton had disclosed that a child had died in an accident involving the Tread+.

The Same-Day Response

Peloton responded that day. It called the commission's warning inaccurate and misleading, and said there was no reason to stop using the Tread+ provided the warnings and safety instructions were followed.

This is a coherent position in the narrow sense that the machine did behave as documented. The Tread+ used a slatted belt over exposed rollers with a substantial gap beneath the rear of the deck. Objects — and children, and pets — could be drawn into that gap and under the machine. The manual said to keep children away. The company's argument was that the product was safe when used as directed, which is true of nearly everything, and which is the reason product safety regulation exists at all.

Eighteen Days

The stock fell. The coverage did not improve. On 5 May 2021, eighteen days after calling the warning inaccurate and misleading, Peloton recalled the Tread+ along with its smaller sibling, the Tread — roughly 125,000 machines, following one child's death and dozens of reported incidents.

Chief executive John Foley said the company had made a mistake in its initial response and should have engaged more productively with the commission from the outset, and apologised. Nothing about the machine had changed in those eighteen days. What changed was the position.

The Part That Took Two More Years

The recall did not produce a fix. It produced a refund offer and an instruction to stop using the machine, which for an owner of a treadmill costing several thousand dollars is a meaningful thing to be told and an easy thing to postpone.

An approved repair — a rear guard designed to close the entrapment gap — was not announced until 2023. By that point the commission's count stood at one child death and roughly ninety injuries. Peloton was later fined by the federal government over the delayed and faulty handling of the recall, which is a sentence that describes the process rather more precisely than the apology did.

What the Warning Was For

The commission's unilateral warning exists for exactly the situation that occurred: a hazard the agency considers urgent and a manufacturer that does not agree. It is a slow, blunt instrument, rarely used, and its only real force is public attention.

It worked. It took eighteen days, a falling share price, and a video of a child being dragged under a treadmill, and then the company that had called the warning inaccurate and misleading recalled 125,000 machines and said it should have listened.

The commission had asked for the recall before it issued the warning. That was the request Peloton declined, and the reason the video was released at all.

Filed from public reporting:

• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission — "CPSC and Peloton Announce Recall of Tread Plus Treadmills After One Child Death and 70 Incidents"
• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission — "Peloton Tread+ Rear Guard Repair Approved; One Child Death and 90 Injuries Reported"
• Peloton Interactive — "Peloton Refutes Consumer Product Safety Commission Claims" (17 April 2021)
• NBC News — "Peloton reverses course, recalling all treadmills after safety concerns"
• PBS NewsHour — "Peloton announces recall of treadmills after a child dies"
• Fortune — "Consumer Product Safety Commission urges public to stop using Peloton's Tread+ treadmill"
• Consumer Reports — "Consumer Reports applauds federal fine of Peloton for delayed, faulty recall of treadmills"
• Risk Management Magazine — "Key Lessons From Peloton's Tread+ Recall"