Our local park district runs a platform tennis program. For those of you who don’t know the game it is similar to tennis but on a court one third the size of a tennis court and it is played outside during winter. Here’s a YouTube video. Because this game is played during winter the stairs around the courts and the paddle hut will get very slippery because of the snow.

Two years ago I noticed the Park District putting down grip tape on the stairs. I thought this would be a good opportunity to set up a comparison between the treads and non-slip tape so I volunteered to put some treads down side by side with the nonslip tape as a comparison test. The grip tape was applied according to manufacturer’s instructions in nice warm weather on clean dry steps. The Handi-Treads were installed in the middle of a snow storm (See Installation Video On YouTube). The nonslip tape did not last very long as it started to peal up after the first few snows (as seen in the picture on the right).

By the end of the first winter almost all of the nonslip tape had pealed up. So when year two began I thought the park district would ask me to install HandiTreads on all of the steps, but new management had arrived and they wanted to try nonslip paint. So this past year the HandiTreads were compared against nonslip paint. Within just a couple of months we discovered that the nonslip paint simply wore off the steps.

Here is a photo display of the three products. While I still don’t know if the park district will ask us to install HandiTreads for next year I now have photographic proof of the durability of the HandiTreads.

During a taping of American Idol back in 2009, Jill Kohl claimed she took a nasty fall in Paula Abdul's driveway.  Ms. Abdul agreed to pay $900,000 to settle this law suit and the production company agreed to pay an additional $100,000.  Total settlement for this slip and fall incident: $1 million.

See the full stroy as reported in TMZ: http://www.tmz.com/2012/02/22/paula-abdul-jill-kohl-settlement/#.T0fqKKg2x8E

It should not surprise anyone that when you do a Google search for “slip and fall” the majority of the listings are for law firms. Seven of the first ten free (also known as organic) listings were for law firms and all eleven ads were for law firms. The law firms that were advertising here are spending over $13.00 for each visitor that clicks on their ad.

Slip and Fall injuries are big business. Big legal business. According to the National Floor Safety Institute the average cost to defend a law suit is $50,000. But the average judgment if a case goes to trial is $100,000. (See CostHelper.com: http://personalfinance.costhelper.com/slip-fall-lawsuit.html)

However most slip and fall injuries result in minor injuries and the cost for these occurrences is usually around $12,000 according to a Wausau Insurance Study. The bottom line is that slip and fall injuries are a serious concern for everyone and we all need to take precautions to reduce and avoid these accidents.

Of course I shouldn't need to remind you that HandiTreads are a great way to reduce the number of slips and falls in your home or office: http://www.handiramp.com/nonskidtreads.htm