First of all, I would like to thank you for your tireless efforts in making others aware of this danger. I have no doubt that you have already saved some children from injury.
In terms of increasing your effectiveness, one thing that will get every college’s attention is the potential of large legal damages from knowingly allowing an unsafe condition.
Note that I am not a lawyer, but perhaps other lawyers can chime in on the following approach, to be used against colleges that allow lofted beds without rails:
You send a certified letter to the college's housing and legal departments describing what happened to your son, and that your goal is to create a safe environment for future students.
You describe the minimal costs for ensuring this safety.
You appeal to the college's desire to create a safe environment for all of its students (the carrot).
If the college refuses to make changes and you hear that a child gets hurt, you will contact the family letting them know that the college knowingly allowed unsafe conditions to persist despite being made aware of the dangers.
Hey HebeGebe, you make some great points, but I am thinking even bigger picture! I am shooting for a national (or even international) safety standard for institutional beds. First of all, logistically there are thousands of schools and a registered letter to each and every school at $5+ bucks a pop would get pretty expensive and RAD runs on a pretty lean budget. lol. Also, and very unfortunately, state schools are VERY difficult to sue. Before RAD it was even harder, but now that the information is out there, at least in the state of GA, they can no longer claim they knew nothing about it. Anyway, I like the way you think and believe me think the parents approaching their own schools this way isn’t a bad idea at all!
Does anyone have a recommendation for a bed rail we can purchase that’s effective but not too expensive? My son’s college provides them, but they were all out when he requested one. They will order him one, but I’m afraid with his mattress topper it will be too low.
(Oh, and for those whose kids don’t want one, my son didn’t want one, either, until his comforter fell onto the floor in the middle of the night. Then he changed his mind!)
I hesitate to recommend a retail option for the rail as I feel the one made for the bed is the best option. Make sure to mention the concern about the height of the rail with your housing department. If they are going to have safety rails, they need to make them high enough to accommodate the current trend of mattress toppers. Or, in the meantime you could use a thinner more gel type topper. Please let me know how this works out!
Hi @RADRailMom thanks for being a crusader and glad to hear you son is doing so well after all he (and the family) went through. Do you now if there a list of schools that do or don’t provide safety railings? Has anyone polled or collected that info? USC doesn’t have them on the beds, but they are provided upon request, for example. The retail options are pretty slim for rails, they are either for little kids or old people, so a tough sell to a college student. Hopefully all the colleges at least make them available for their particular bed.
Hey CADreamin. Thank you! I love what I do. To my knowledge there is no list. In fact, it is sometimes like pulling teeth to find out safety rail information via college websites, etc. I am working in the state of Georgia to make all universities and colleges to have a page on their site devoted to safety rails and also to make the topic more searchable. I have found that even universities who do offer rails will show 20 pictures on their website with a loft or bunk and no rail in sight. As far as “available upon request”, I think that’s b.s. if you want my opinion. I think the schools are offering an inherently unsafe product and they shouldn’t be able to do that. How are they able to insure that room when you have a kid sleeping 6-7’ off of a concrete floor and zero safety rails. The statistics are obvious. When you have 71,000 ER visits every year from bunk and loft bed injuries (and that’s just the reported ones) it’s pretty apparent it’s time for an institutional bed safety standard.
Thank you for posting and working for change. I’m so happy to hear that your son is doing well because that had to be so scary.
D18 was actually a little worried about falling off. Her dorm comes lofted but it seems like her school is moving away from them. The beds were lowered from lofts in a newer dorm on her campus.
D18 asked and promptly received a rail. Her roommate’s bed came with one and not sure about the rest of the suite.
Even though mine doesn’t need it, I actually called the housing customer service center at USC and they are definitely provided if requested. She asked which room and I told her I was just being sure they had them. (“Big brother parents” are watching you, colleges.) With all the press they have had lately the last thing they need is another medical dilemma hitting the news. I thought that they can’t be that stupid to not provide them…but called to make sure. (Still would rather see them on every lofted bed, but it’s a start.) We had a mad go around at my house about it before school started, but it ends up mine is on a regular low bed. But I did tell her to let people on her floor know they are available. Her buddy is an RA and he verified they are available for those that want them - that is the hard part, convincing a college student they should have one. But I showed your videos! The statistics are crazy. Thanks again.
I just posted this on my RAD Facebook page and on social media. Funny that schools require Hep B immunizations, yet our country has 1000 cases per year (that’s general population, not college students) yet with 71,000 ER visits from bunk and loft beds (75% of those falls) and we can’t get so much as a brochure, warning label or safety rail without asking for it. Makes zero sense.
Thanks for all of your efforts and so glad your son is doing better. My son has a medical problem such that he is occasionally restless in bed. He is still in high school but I wondered how he would manage in college and whether he might fall out of bed. I appreciate your advice.
Thanks for your efforts @RADRailMom, it really is an important one. A number of years ago when I lived on a military base I tried to start a campaign banning backyard trampolines in housing areas. The injury statistics were appalling, yet noone took me seriously and I got nowhere. I am glad they don’t seem so popular anymore. My daughter was not allowed to go on one without direct close adult supervision.
I am glad that my daughter’s school requires and provides lofted beds with rails.
We had them in an apartment, but it was the kind with a dresser, bookcase and desk built in. We used a toddler bed instead of the bottom bunk because our daughter was small enough for it and it made the room feel bigger. When we moved into our house, the bunk bed went in our oldest’s room as a loft bed. Then she broke her arm (she was 9) and couldn’t get into the bunk bed, so we bought her a queen bed like these types https://10restbest.com/best-loft-beds-for-adults-and-kids and moved the bunk bed to her younger sister’s room. Nobody slept in the bunk bed after that, they both insist on sleeping in the queen bed in the oldest’s room. So I sold the bunk bed for as much as I had paid for it (on Craigslist) and bought regular bedroom furniture for the little one, which she never uses because she sleeps in her sister’s room.
We all liked the idea of the bunk bed but once the novelty wore off, it wasn’t a lot of fun. And once she broke her arm, she couldn’t get up to the bed. She healed in about 3 weeks but by then we’d already replaced the bed.
I’ve read about half this thread, so I apologize if I’m asking something that’s already been addressed.
Leaving aside someone being drunk, why would a kid be any more likely to fall out of a top bunk than a regular bed? To the best of my knowledge, my 17 year old has never fallen out of bed. Well, maybe once or twice right after we took the railing off his toddler bed, but definitely not since then. If he knows how not to roll off a bed in his sleep, he knows how, regardless of the height of the bed.
I can remember having a top bunk at sleep away camp and I never fell out of that.
Who are all these otherwise competent young adults falling out of bed?
Now, I can imagine slipping or missing a step getting down, but it doesn’t seem like a railing would help with that.
@millie210 , Just because you can’t fathom why somebody would fall out of a bed, bunked or not doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, drunk or not drunk., see the statistics. The OP has been a crusader to make sure it doesn’t happen to others.
I turn over many times of night, many times kind of flopping over to get comfy. I can’t say I wouldnt fall out of a twin bed, especially with no nightstand next to it.
@millie210 I doubt the OP worried about it much until she had to worry about it. The outcome of one fall came be extremely serious with lifelong consequences, drunk or not.
I am the OP and I’m hoping to shed some light and answer your questions. I’m not sure if you got to visit our website but the statistics pretty much speak for themselves. 71,000 (competent) young people get injured badly enough to go to the ER every year. That’s a big number in my book. A $40 safety rail could prevent a lot of these accidents. Let me ask a question. How safe is it to sleep 6-7 feet over a hard floor with no safety rail? What’s the harm in making it safer? Here’s a link to our PSA. https://youtu.be/P61HnrabUpE
P.S. My son was sober and nearly died. He is an engineering major at Georgia Tech so I would say he’s competent.
@millie210 your child never fell out of bed but if they need to get up in the middle of the night, their feet touch the floor and they stand. On a top bed, if someone is in a sound sleep and should wake up suddenly and go to stand up, they will not have the floor directly beneath them.
Thank you @RADRailMom. This is such a worthy cause with a simple solution. My daughter was not given a rail when she first moved into her freshman dorm, which had high bunk beds. I insisted she follow up with residential services and they did give her a rail. She thought I was over-protective until a friend broke her ankle getting out of her bed in the middle of the night. She forgot she was in a bunk bed. I’m sure a rail would have been a good reminder.
I fell out of a bunk bed in college. I was extremely lucky. I was not drunk. Just had a very vivid nightmare that caused me to fly out of my bed. (I was a sleep walker and talker in my younger days). I somehow avoided hitting my head on the desk below. I still shudder thinking about how awful that could have been. My roommate on the bottom bunk was relegated to the top bunk after that. I never climbed up there again.