Ikea, the world’s largest furniture seller, recently agreed to pay $50 million to settle three cases in which boys died after being crushed by Ikea dressers that toppled on them.

The settlement doesn’t clear the way for Ikea to go back to business as usual. If anything, the payout seems to indicate how badly Ikea mismanaged the safety issue. The deaths might have been prevented had Ikea designed its dressers to pass the industry’s national voluntary safety test, developed to ensure that dressers meet a minimum standard for stability.

Instead, Ikea was slow to respond to safety concerns after scores of accidents dating to 1989. That was the year that a 20-month-old Virginia girl died after a four-drawer chest tipped over and fatally pinned her. Last February, a 22-month-old Minnesota boy died after a six-drawer chest fell on him.

But it was not until June that Ikea agreed to stop selling dressers that were found to tip over too easily and offer refunds to customers that bought the 29 million dressers sold over the course of more than a decade.

Ikea finally took some action after increased scrutiny that included a series of stories by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Tricia L. Nadolny. Too bad it took public shaming and legal action to force the company to do the right thing.

A child dies an average of every two weeks in accidents involving toppled furniture or TV sets. Last week, Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Amy Klobucher, D-Minn., and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said they plan to reintroduce legislation calling for stronger furniture safety standards.

Corporations should always do the right thing, but too often they don’t. Now is the time to act before another child dies needlessly.