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W
e all fall down far too many times in our lives. We accept too many falls and injuries that should have been avoided in the first place. We endure too much pain and suffering, and we experience too much regret and guilt as lives are impaired or lost forever. We spend anxious hours in hospital waiting rooms, we lose time at work and time for leisure, and we spend time in jury trials carrying out our civic duty assigning blame and financial compensation. We all pay the price for falls in the form of higher medical costs and insurance rates, expensive attorney fees and lawsuits. The planning, design, construction, and maintenance of our buildings and sites often results in hazards. Our lack of observation skills, carelessness, and unwillingness to take risk seriously only make matters worse.
Americans are often surprised to learn that falls are the third leading cause of accidental death and that more than half of all fatal falls occur in private residences. Falls result in more than 36,000 deaths every year. More than 2.8 million people are treated in emergency rooms and over 800,000 are hospitalized because of fall injuries annually. Each year over $50 billion is spent on medical costs due to falls, with the average hospitalization for a fall injury exceeding $30,000.
The information in this book can help you to; 1) prevent falling, 2) minimize falling injuries when you do fall, and 3) sensitize you to falling dangers in the built environment. It can help you to plan, design, construct, and maintain buildings and sites that are safer for everyone. It can also help you think through if there was a hazard present when you fell, if property owners were negligent for having the hazard, and if you should seek legal help to try to obtain financial compensation.
With all this in mind I began my investigations about falls in the early 1980s after I received a phone call from an attorney asking me to do an inspection where someone fell. Years of investigations followed, and in 1994 I teamed up with Professor Jeff Huston at Iowa State University (ISU) to research the subject of falls in detail. Jeff and I were both active faculty members in the Gerontology program when we first spoke about the alarming number of falls among older Americans. Jeff was developing protective hip pads to be sewn inside comfortable clothing that vulnerable seniors could wear. We decided to co-author a book on the subject with my covering safety and environmental factors, while Jeff focused on the bio-mechanics of falling. But after completing our initial research, Jeff unfortunately became seriously ill, and his life was tragically cut short. I thank ISU for supporting our initial collaborative research. In the years that followed, I completed many investigations and reports during early morning hours, on weekends and during summers. The intellectually stimulating university environment kept me motivated, and stepping back to a half-time teaching position provided time for me to finally complete this book.
