The Coalition For Container Safety has reported that in the past five years more than one hundred small children have drowned after falling into buckets containing water or other liquids, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
These buckets most often are five-gallon, open head, 14 inch straight-sided, plastic industrial containers, generally used to transport bulk or commercial quantities of products including food, paint, cleaning solutions and construction materials. When emptied of their original contents, these containers are often used in the home for containing cleaning fluid while household chores are being performed. If the bucket, filled with just a few gallons of water, is left unattended with a typical eight month to fifteen month old curious child nearby, the child is liable to crawl to the bucket and pull himself or herself up by the rim, or toddle to the bucket. Standing at the bucket, the child can then reach into the bucket to play in the water, or with his or her reflection in the water. If a toy or other object is dropped into the water, the child is likely to lean forward into the bucket in an attempt to retrieve the toy resulting in the child toppling head first into the bucket. Because much of the weight is distributed in the top portion of the child's body, and the 14 inch bucket is about half the height of the typical, top heavy child, with the rim of the bucket just below the child's center of gravity and the weight of the bucket of water being more than the weight of the child, the bucket does not tip over and the child cannot otherwise work free when he or she falls into the bucket head first.
In Applicant's continued pursuit to answer the call of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for child resistant products, he has now extended his inventive expertise in child resistant closures for medicine bottles, child resistant closures for industrial containers, and child resistant cigarette lighters to the industrial container, or bucket, of the present invention, having a guard to prevent a child from toppling head first into the bucket containing water or other liquid to thereby protect the child from drowning.