I know they’re hurt and they are grieving, but the parents did not operate the safe according to instructions and did not provide adequate supervision of their child knowing there are loaded firearms in the house.
Under the law in some states, they would lose their guns all around because they didn’t secure them properly.
I’m not pro-gun, but this is not justice.
The device defaults to unsafe. For a device designed to protect lives, that’s incredibly irresponsible.
According to the recall:
There have been 39 incidents of consumers reporting that their safes have been accessed by unpaired fingerprints.
Meaning the device is janky enough that at least 39 other people have also had the same problem.
Additionally
the parents did not operate the safe according to instructions
The article doesn’t state that. It’s possible that the parents followed the instructions or thought they followed the instructions, but the device failed to provide sufficient feedback that it was in kill-your-kids mode.
True, but you would expect that it would require saving at least one fingerprint for that feature to function, just look at a modern cell phone, you can’t turn the function on unless you program it, the company is definitely at fault for not putting in a bare minimum of safety into it.
The parents should be in prison for failure secure their guns. They can sue the manufacturer from prison. If they win, they can use that argument for early release.
More of a gun cabinet really. If the lock doesn’t work is it really safe?
The safes contain a biometric reader that allows unpaired fingerprints to open the safe until a fingerprint is programmed, allowing unauthorized persons, including children, to access hazardous contents, including firearms
It’s not that the lock doesn’t work, it’s that they never set it up.
Lock should not default to “any print unlocks it until it’s programmed.” Like someone mentioned above, if you don’t add a fingerprint to your phone, then fingerprint unlock is disabled. Otherwise, anyone could get into your phone if you didn’t set up your fingerprint. And that’s a PHONE, not a gun safe.
The manufacturer should have required the physical key to be present and the safe unlocked before you can program a code or fingerprint. This is how cheap ass Amazon combo locks work. While I feel the onus is almost entirely on the parents here, the manufacturer is at the very least negligent in its design.
So, the parents thought it magically came pre-programmed with their fingerprints from the factory and went; “hey, it works out of the box, how neat is that?!”
I’m sure they could’ve/should’ve taken higher quality idiots into account when making the thing, but is it really too much to ask of parents to read a manual and verify that a lock works as it should, when it is to keep firearms out of reach from your children?
I mean, yes? It’s insane to think that a fingerprint reader is designed, by default, to open from any fingerprint.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that if you put your finger on a lock and it unlocks that you might believe it also programmed itself to use only that fingerprint.
It’s easy to blame the user in situations like this. The recall indicates that 39 other people have had the safe fail in the same way. It also states:
Consumers can believe they have properly programmed the biometric feature when in fact the safe remains in the default to open mode
The problem is, everyone can have a bad day. If a user has to be at the top of their game to use a consumer device, it’s badly designed. For a safety device that’s fucking horrific.
is it really too much to ask of parents to read a manual and verify that a lock works as it should, when it is to keep firearms out of reach from your children?
The article doesn’t state whether they did or didn’t follow the instructions. They went through the effort of buying the safe, installing it, powering it, putting their guns in it, and then locking it. That suggests they probably did their best at configuring it.
Putting the onus on the consumer just makes it easy for shitty companies to keep building shitty products
Sorry, but this is a really stupid thing to say. A fingerprint scanner shouldn’t work unless a fingerprint has explicitly been set up.
So you argue they should have just rebranded retroactively?
No. They should have done the recall before they got sued.
Illinois-based Fortress Safe recalled 61,000 gun safes after 39 reports that a flaw in the safes’ biometric feature made it seem like they were locked for unauthorized users, but actually remained in “default to open” mode.
Safety devices must default to safe (pun not intended). The fingerprint lock should only open the safe with a registered finger.
The designers of that thing screwed up.
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