Again, tragedy has struck down an innocent child — and again, the tragedy was avoidable. Former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson’s 4-year-old daughter has died, a day after strangling on a cord left dangling from a treadmill at her Phoenix, AZ home.

The treadmill wasn’t turned on, but clearly the cord was still dangerous. Normally such cords are clipped at one end to a treadmill user, so if the person falls, the cord will pull out of the machine at the other end and turn it off. In this case, little Exodus Tyson’s weight apparently wasn’t enough to pull out the cord, which instead became a noose.

Safety Matters, which focuses on child-proofing homes, says about 1,000 children under 14 die each year from unintentional strangulation, and of those, 88 per cent are under 4. The sad truth is that, with small children, it doesn’t take much to cause a tragedy, whether in the home, at a pool or in or around an automobile.

With summer here, pool safety becomes a major issue. Yet at any time of year, safeguarding children is adults’ responsibility. It can take only a few moments for a child to drown, to be run over by a car backing out of a driveway or to get caught in a cord hanging from a treadmill — a few moments for a young life with boundless potential to end. But if we all take precautionary child safety measures at all times, and in all places, we can make a difference. We can save little ones’ lives.

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