“Fall from a 20-foot tower and break your leg, you’ll make the 6:00 news,” he says. “But break your leg from a same level fall, that’s just not spectacular enough.”

Paramedics know differently. Lesperance has attended numerous same-level falls that were, unfortunately, spectacularly life-altering. He has turned these experiences into keynote safety talks, videos, and Small Falls Are a Big Deal, one of his many books. He drives home the safety message with candid examples of people who learned the hard way.

Like the woman who rushed to greet the pizza delivery guy. Her area rug, which wasn’t secured, slid beneath her. “She heard a loud snap and screamed,” Lesperance writes. It was the worst broken leg his crew had ever seen.

“Her leg was broken halfway between the knee and the ankle. The lower part of her leg was lying next to the part of her leg that was below the knee. The bottom of her foot was facing 180 degrees from where it should have been.”

Lesperance has seen countless other examples: the man who fell down four steps, broke his neck and became completely quadriplegic, or the man who was visiting his mother after his father’s funeral and tripped over the open dishwasher door, landing with a fork lodged fatally in his forehead.

Same level slips and trips are just as devastating in the workplace, where they account for 65 per cent of fall-related injuries in Ontario alone, according to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). The OSSA says same-level falls are the result of improper equipment and footwear, lack of information and understanding of the risk, and apathy.

Prevention methods are relatively simple. Keep the area clear of hazards. Ensure the ground is non-slippery. Wear slip-resistant footwear. Lesperance adds two other pieces of advice, which he repeats in all of his safety talks: “don’t rush” and “never walk or step where your eyes haven’t already been.”

Tread carefully
Anyone in food service knows the fast-paced, greasy-floored environment is hard to avoid. Richard Cunningham developed slip-resistant footwear programs for employers in Canada’s food and hospitality sector in the 1990s. He says Wendy’s was the first corporation to commit to the program, followed by Tim Hortons and others. Today, Cunningham is a marketing consultant for footwear products, representing Shoes for Crews and a few other brands, “only the ones I believe in.”

Cunningham has seen many companies mandate that everyone in the workplace should wear slip-resistant footwear, “but sometimes that’s as far as it goes,” he says. “Companies sometimes fail to make sure employees buy appropriate footwear from an accredited slip-resistant footwear provider.”

In restaurants and foodservice, he says, the standard orange, quarry-tiled floors get “inundated, coated, and basically impregnated with food grease.” Other slippery work environments include meat processing plants, where floors are typically covered with water, blood and animal viscera; industrial workplaces where machines or vehicles leak oil and grease; roofs; woodworking shops; and many more.

Reducing same-level falls requires awareness of the risk, employee safety training, and anti-slip matting in key work areas. Matting, however, doesn’t follow workers wherever they go. Appropriate footwear is essential, especially for workers who can’t control what’s on the ground.

(Next: Slickest workplace)