Levittown teacher pushes for new national child safety law

Caption: Michele Witte, a member of Levittown United Teachers, is surrounded by students holding Tyler’s Teddies. The teddy bears are named in honor of Witte’s infant son who passed away in 1997. Witte has been advocating for stronger safety measures on children’s products since Tyler's death. Photo Credit: Provided.

Michele Witte’s infant son Tyler died tragically in 1997 due to ineffective crib design; since then, the Levittown United Teachers member has made it her mission to protect other children and families from the same fate.

After Tyler’s funeral, Witte began investigating see if her son’s death was an isolated incident.

It turned out, it wasn’t.

“I still have autopsies and reports in my basement from 20 years ago, when I was sorting through all these deaths and asking myself, “How could this happen?” Witte said.

She and another mother whose child died in the same way joined forces with Kids in Danger, a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for safety improvements in child products, including cribs, toys, bathtub seats, highchairs and strollers.

In 2011, thanks to the efforts of Witte and other resolute parents, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission banned the manufacture, sale and resale of drop-side cribs and prohibited their use in childcare facilities and other public accommodations.

After that happened, Witte turned her attention to improving reporting requirements for incidents involving children, leading to the introduction of Tyler’s Law, which mandates that hospitals, medical examiner offices, and coroner offices report to the CPSC incidents related to the death or serious injury of a child because of a product or durable good.

Currently, it’s up to the manufacturer to self-report or for parents to notify the federal agency.

“There are very few organizations that deal with child safety, so right now, it just falls back on the parents,” said Witte.

Witte said strengthening the reporting system will improve the federal agency’s ability to investigate and remove dangerous products from the market.

Last July, Tyler’s Law was introduced at the federal level.

“Now, we don’t have to go state by state. We can bypass all that, and hopefully get it passed nationally,” Witte said.

H.R. 4340 – Tyler's Law is currently in committee. “We've had zero pushback,” Witte said. “It's really bipartisan. The CPSC is an organization that's already intact, and this is just a notification so the CPSC can do its job.”

Witte said the passage of this law will feel uniquely personal. “What’s happened over the last 20 years, it was about a lot of kids,” Witte said. “Tyler’s Law is about my kid.”

Tyler’s death is still listed as an accident, she said, because there was no such thing as death by consumer product in the late 1990s.

“We've come so far and so many lives were saved because of having tougher standards for child products and getting unsafe products off the shelves, but Tyler's Law is about having a way to find out about defective products before a tragedy happens,” said Witte. “This is, for me, the last piece of the puzzle.”