Peloton Recalls its treadmills, CEO apologizes for fighting US regulators

Check out the video of a Peloton eating a small child, you'll understand why they're being recalled. The design is quite different from most treadmills and the belt, which is made up of narrow slats, tends to grab pets and small kids and pull them under.

Chomp chomp wrote:

Check out the video of a Peloton eating a small child, you'll understand why they're being recalled. The design is quite different from most treadmills and the belt, which is made up of narrow slats, tends to grab pets and small kids and pull them under.

Woodway treadmills have a similar belt with slats. I don't think they were ever recalled.

This is definitely just hobby joggers freaking out because they're too dumb to keep their young children away from a moving treadmill. One of the videos i saw on the news showed an unattended spinning treamill that a baby crawled up to. First off, don't leave the treadmill on if you leave it! Second off, why is there a baby crawling freely beside it? Bunch of morans.

I'm STUNNED by the quick turnaround. When the CEO last week was like going public to say this was all a bunch of nothing, I very much noticed it. CEO's don't normally fight stuff like that so I figured he had to be VERY confident as I was reading that I was watching a kid get sucked under a treadmill on video. Now he's like recalling everything and apologizing. I can't believe he's done a quick 180.

So many thoughts.

I want to know what has changed. Most people have a hard time admitting they have made a big mistake, so kudos to them. But I imagine he'll still be fired for this. What possibly could have gotten him to change his mind this quickly and forcefully?

rojo wrote:

I'm STUNNED by the quick turnaround. When the CEO last week was like going public to say this was all a bunch of nothing, I very much noticed it. CEO's don't normally fight stuff like that so I figured he had to be VERY confident as I was reading that I was watching a kid get sucked under a treadmill on video. Now he's like recalling everything and apologizing. I can't believe he's done a quick 180.

So many thoughts.

I want to know what has changed. Most people have a hard time admitting they have made a big mistake, so kudos to them. But I imagine he'll still be fired for this. What possibly could have gotten him to change his mind this quickly and forcefully?

treadmills are a fraction of their business. So public perception is their most valuable asset here. A recall, whether warranted or not, solves that. His initial reaction wasn't carefully scripted by the PR team.. so the '180' doesn't surprise me.

Chomp chomp wrote:

Check out the video of a Peloton eating a small child, you'll understand why they're being recalled. The design is quite different from most treadmills and the belt, which is made up of narrow slats, tends to grab pets and small kids and pull them under.

There is 3 inches between the ground and the bottom on the treadmill belt. (I just measured because I actually have one). 3 inches. The treadmill is not violently sucking up anything in sight. Ironically, the video of the baby/toddler shows you have to actively push an exercise ball underneath it and literally crawl underneath it to get ‘sucked’ under.

I follow a lot of Peloton things on social media and I’ve seen almost zero negative comments about the treadmill through all of this (despite people typically being ruthlessly negative on social media for no reason). The vast, vast majority of people that actually own the Tread + think a recall is ridiculous (at least from what I’ve seen). The general consensus is that, yes, of course bad things can happen, So take precautions. But it really has nothing to do with a careless design. However, I think the auto-lock and requiring a 4 digit password to turn on is a good idea to prevent kids from playing on it. (Peloton said this update would come soon).

I’m all for erroring on the side of caution. I think the software update with auto-lock and passcode will address this. But the recall honestly just angers me. It simply doesn’t help people. I feel like people and companies are being pressured to do things that don’t make any sense. I tend to just let things go- like who really cares right? But idk, this just bugs me for some reason.

Most treadmills have a bar across the back below the belt to stop this exact thing. It's a poor / minimalist design.

LTHR hurts wrote:

Most treadmills have a bar across the back below the belt to stop this exact thing. It's a poor / minimalist design.

Some do, some don't. but wouldn't a bar also create a pinch point that could suck in a child's clothing and injure them. Is the design really that poor compared to others in the industry, or is this a matter of regulators going after the well known name that is often in the headlines.

The safety key that comes with this product is actually a really good safety feature, IMO. if you don't leave that with the machine, it won't even work while pluged in. I don't necessarily consider myself a treadmill connoisseur, but the only machine that I've run on that I've thought was better than the tread+ was a woodway that was at a health club I used to go to, and it had a very, very simiar design.

After a hard day of work, I'd much rather spend my time outside for free than pay thousands for some wokoholic machine that is likely spying on me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxDEoDojJ4

rojo wrote:

So many thoughts.

I want to know what has changed. Most people have a hard time admitting they have made a big mistake, so kudos to them. But I imagine he'll still be fired for this. What possibly could have gotten him to change his mind this quickly and forcefully?

So many thoughts.

Most people have a hard time admitting they have made a big mistake, just like Running website CEOs. But I imagine the Running website CEO will never be fired for this.