Preventing Injuries on Stairs: Risky Behaviors and Distractions Among Young Women

2023-07-29 16:35:00

WATCH YOUR STEP ! This is the message that scientists from Purdue University (USA) recently wanted to convey. “Injuries are common on stairs, with high rates among young adults, particularly women. They may result from physiological and/or behavioral differences,” they wrote in a study published in the journal Plos One.

As part of this work, the researchers tried to determine the risky behaviors adopted by young women that are responsible for their falls on the stairs. To carry out their work, over the course of a semester, they filmed two staircases located inside an American university campus, one had two steps and the other consisted of 17 steps. A total of 2,400 young adults took these so-called “short” (including 52% women) and “long” (including 29% women) stairs.

Falls: 8 risky behaviors observed on the stairs

According to the data, eight risky behaviors were observed when descending the stairs. These are not using the handrail, not watching the stairs while descending, wearing sandals, flip flops or high heels, having a conversation with a person live or on the phone, using a smartphone, having hands in pockets, holding something and jumping stairs.

In videos focusing on two-step stairs, “no one used the handrail, 16.1% used an electronic device, and 16.4% had conversations. On the 17-step staircase, 64.8% of pedestrians did not use the handrail, 11.9% used an electronic device and 14.5% had discussions.”

The authors also identified five people who lost their balance on the top step during the descent, but did not fall. The latter had their gaze averted at the time of the loss of balance. Four were men on the long stairway, and one was a woman on the short stairway.

Women are multitaskers and thus more likely to be distracted on the way down

According to the results, women were significantly less likely to use the ramp, more likely to hold something in their hands, more easily engaged in conversation, and possibly wearing sandals and heels. However, women were less likely to skip steps and looked at them more on the way down than men.

Overall, the study suggests that women are often multitaskers and therefore susceptible to distraction when descending stairs, which might be more dangerous than skipping stairs or not looking at stairs, behaviors more often seen in young men. “Future research should also examine physiological differences that may increase injury risk, such as differences in strength or reaction time,” concluded the team in a statement.

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