How Slips, Trips, and Falls Happen

They're three different events with three different fixes:

• Slip — your foot loses traction with the surface. Wet floors, spilled oil, ice, loose gravel, smooth soles. You slip when there isn't enough grip between your boot and the ground.
• Trip — your foot catches on something and stops while the rest of you keeps going. A raised floor edge, a hose, a stack of material, an extension cord, a curled-up mat.
• Fall — you lose your balance and hit the ground or a lower level. A slip or trip often ends in a fall, but you can also fall off an edge, through a hole, or down a set of stairs.

Falls split two ways: a fall on the same level (you land where you were standing) and a fall to a lower level (off a platform, into a hole, down the stairs). Same-level falls are more common; lower-level falls are more likely to be serious or fatal.

People discount slips and trips because most of the time you catch yourself. But the injuries are real — fractures, sprained ankles, torn shoulders from grabbing for a rail, back injuries, and head injuries when you go down hard or land against something. Older workers and anyone carrying a load get hurt worse because they can't recover their balance in time.

The reason they keep happening is that the hazards are familiar. The wet spot's been there since this morning, the cord's been run across that path for a week. Nobody reported it because it never hurt anybody — yet. Your job is to notice those conditions and fix them before they collect a victim.

The talks that follow break the problem down: keeping surfaces clean and in good repair, dealing with wet and slippery floors, weather and ice, uneven surfaces and changes in level, trip hazards like cords and clutter, footwear, lighting, stairways, handrails and guardrails, and floor holes and open edges.

Falls from real height — roofs, scaffolds, leading edges, fall-arrest harnesses — are covered in the Working at Heights category. This category focuses on staying on your feet and on the low-level falls that come straight out of the surface you're standing on.