Steps to safety
More than one million injuries a year are attributed to falling down the stairs, with approximately 12,000 of these ending in death. A number of factors are thought to contribute to the risk of a fall, including gait speed. But a new study has found that using markers at the edge of steps can significantly reduce the speed at which people walked down stairs.
Researchers placed high-contrast black vinyl stripes to the front of each stair’s tread and worked out gait speed from more than 5,800 video observations of people using the stairs. They compared the results with an unaltered stairway.
They discovered that gait speed was significantly slower on the stairs with edge markers. The study concluded: “Tread-edge contrast enhancement could be a low-cost means to reduce fall-risk on stairways. We found that contrast enhancement reduced descending gait speed, but descending gait speed’s impact on fall risk reduction ultimately requires further investigation.”
