“… That only a child can do it!”

Stop me if this isn’t blindingly obvious:

1. 90% of adults have problems with child-proof packaging on medicines.
2. Folks who struggle with it eventually develop shortcuts — defeating the packaging (by leaving the lids off) or putting pills into other containers.
3. These other containers are not, generally speaking, child-proof, thus defeating the whole idea.

Well, duh.

University of Sheffield researchers said packaging should be easy to open, but in a way that is too complex for young children to work out. Campaigners said child poisoning rates have fallen in recent years but more work is needed.
Dr Belinda Winder at the Packaging Research Group in Sheffield said the main problem adults found with child-proof packaging was they did not have the physical strength to open them. This worsened in people over 50, the journal of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council reported.
[…] The solution, they said, was for child-proof packaging – or child resistant closures (CRCs) as they are known – to be based around mental abilities, not physical ones. Dr Winder said: “CRC designs should not rely on the need for physical strength.”

Again, I say: well, duh.

(via GeekPress)