Guardrails: updated standards to better protect young children

In 2005, Professor Philippe Meyer, head of the intensive care unit at Necker Hospital, sounded the alarm. Every week, he saw a young child who had fallen from a window arrive at his unit. According to figures from the National Consumer Institute, there are 300 such cases in France every year. The doctor had had enough; he called on the public authorities to take action. It must be said that at the time, there were no regulations in place to prevent falls from buildings. There were no requirements. No guardrails, no low walls, no window handles with locks: nothing at all. Whether in apartments, stadiums, or schools, surprisingly, there were no regulations in place.

Thus, in 2009, the Directorate for Housing, Urban Planning, and Landscapes (DHUP, a department of the Ministry of Ecological Transition) requested the reopening of the AFNOR standardization commission responsible for this subject , in order to revise the 1988 NF P01-012 standard on guardrails, a fundamental text for preventing the risk of falls. This revision had two objectives: to specifically address the risk of young children falling out of windows and to simplify the technical recommendations, as some diagrams were too open to interpretation.

When standards precede legislation

This is a textbook case: a voluntary standard that preceded any form of regulation (the first version of the standard dates back to 1957) and has remained in place ever since. In 2021, while the standard was being revised, a short mention appeared in the building and housing code: "Buildings shall be designed and constructed in such a way as to prevent accidental falls from height by persons during normal use" (Article L134-12). This is the very first legislative framework. The law now imposes an obligation of result... and the standard provides the means. "Since then, I have been approached by the Ministry of the Interior," explains Pierre Martin, glass envelope specialist at Apave's technical department and chairman of the AFNOR P01A standardization committee on guardrails. I hope that future regulatory articles will be introduced, inspired by the standard, because the regulatory framework is still very light, particularly for buildings open to the public, workers, and homes." You can click here   to learn more about the comprehensive regulatory and legal framework Pierre Martin points out that the standard does not only apply to guardrails: low walls, window parapets, and interior partitions can also serve as enclosures. "We are talking about protective elements in the broadest sense," he adds.

200 children mobilized for full-scale tests

When he suggested that AFNOR launch the revision, Pierre Martin knew that numerous attempts had already failed since 1988, the date of the last version, because when it comes to safety, it is extremely difficult to set the bar. There is no such thing as zero risk: it is possible to overdo it or not do enough. He therefore decided to conduct an experiment that had never been done before: observing children's behavior. "It seemed obvious to me that all the professionals involved needed to see what young children did with their equipment. So we invited 200 children to climb as quickly as possible over a number of different types of guardrails in a fun way, then to squeeze through them, an action known in the jargon as a 'crossing'," he explains.

Three exercise sessions were organized, bringing together young children from kindergarten to elementary school, stopwatch in hand. The results were clear. "In less than five seconds, all of the children—including those in the youngest kindergarten class—climbed over the guardrails that comply with the 1988 standard," announced Pierre Martin. It was a moment of truth. No one needed to be convinced anymore!

This experiment leads to two conclusions: first, there is no point in raising the current height, set at one meter, to 1.10 m or even 1.20 m, because children will quickly climb over it. Even at 1.50 m with a smooth panel, the most determined children will manage to climb over it. On the other hand, it is very useful to reduce the diameter of the openings in the panel to a maximum of 11 cm. "The guardrail cannot do everything," Pierre Martin reminds us. Our job is not to turn the house into a bunker, but to buy time, to ensure that a child who escapes their parents' supervision is slowed down. And it has been found that an 11 cm opening is too small for a child's head to pass through."

For the rest, the team of standardizers is calling on public authorities to launch a prevention and information campaign for users on how to behave in relation to the risk of falling from buildings. "Statistics clearly show that more children fall from windows when their parents are alone, or among refugees who have just moved into housing and are not focused on domestic risks, coming from countries where the risks take other forms: war, poverty, etc.," concludes Pierre Martin.

The revised NF P01-012 standard was added to the AFNOR collection on November 22, 2024. It applies to new construction and not to existing buildings, and provides for a six-month period before it becomes applicable (June 2025), allowing time for training.