Building a Better World, Together

A CR investigation last September exposed the dangers posed by water beads, small gel balls sold as toys for children to squeeze and play with. Water beads expand dramatically when soaked in water: Some are as tiny as a cupcake sprinkle but can grow to the size of a marble, while others are the size of a small grape and can grow as big as a golf ball. The problem is that the beads can find their way into the digestive tracts, ears, noses, and lungs of babies and toddlers, where they can contribute to hearing loss, infections, bowel obstructions, blocked airways, and even death.

Following CR’s investigation, we urged retailers to stop selling water beads and supported federal legislation to ban their sale as toys. We also worked with Ashley Haugen, who founded a nonprofit called That Water Bead Lady after her child was seriously injured by water beads, to collect more than 100,000 signatures for petitions calling for a ban on the sale of water beads. We delivered those petitions to the Consumer Product Safety Commission in November.

The mounting pressure is working: In December, Amazon, Michaels, Target, and Walmart told CR they would no longer allow water beads to be sold if they are being marketed for children, and the online marketplaces AliExpress and Etsy said they now prohibit the sale of water beads entirely. That’s good news, but these dangerous products still pose a danger to children, so CR is continuing to push for a broad, mandatory ban on them. You can help by signing our petition.

A 2022 CR investigation into a rash of deadly lithium-ion battery fires found that only a tiny fraction of e-bikes, e-scooters, and similar devices comply with a crucial safety standard. That spurred the Consumer Product Safety Commission to threaten noncomplying manufacturers, retailers, and importers with enforcement actions. Now the House Committee on Energy and Commerce has approved—in a unanimous, bipartisan vote—a CR-endorsed bill that would lead to a mandatory safety standard. The full House is expected to vote on the measure this year.

What’s at stake: Numerous federal investigations have found that Tesla’s Autopilot active driving assistance system had been in use in the lead-up to multiple deadly auto crashes.

What CR is doing about it: For more than five years, CR has called on Tesla to do more to prevent drivers from using Autopilot when they aren’t in control of their vehicle or when they are in situations that the system wasn’t designed for.

In December, the automaker agreed to recall more than 2 million cars equipped with Autopilot, issuing an “over the air” software update that will, among other things, make visual driver alerts more prominent and create a five-strike penalty that disables Autopilot for drivers who repeatedly ignore warnings to apply steering or look at the road.

But CR auto safety experts say the new software doesn’t do enough to prevent misuse or address the root causes of driver inattention. We’re now calling on the company to go further in addressing ongoing safety concerns, including our test track finding that Tesla drivers can easily block their in-car driver monitoring cameras.

CR is also pushing for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to be given more power to force recalls when a company drags its feet.

What you can do: Find recall information for your car using CR’s recall tracker. And you can read our latest ratings of many automakers’ active driving assistance (ADA) systems. (Ford/Lincoln’s BlueCruise and General Motors’ Super Cruise are currently the top-rated.)