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

In January of 2008 our family adopted a rescued dog from the City of Euclid dog pound. Bunnie is a Cane Corso (AKA Italian Mastiff) who had been chained under a porch with no proper food and water. The owners wanted a "fighting" dog and when they discovered Bunnie was no fighting dog they just threw her under the porch and left her alone to the elements. Thankfully she was rescued by our Animal Control Officer.

Bunnie has hip dysplasia in both hind legs. Also she has OCD (Osteochondritis Disease) in both knees of her hind legs. Some of these problems may be genetic or may be caused by lack of proper nutrition during her puppy years.

When Bunnie arrived she was very weak in her rear legs and kind of fell sideways when walking. Well the majority of the floors in our house are bare wood. Also the staircase to our second floor is bare wood. We immediately discovered that the bare wood floors were very difficult for Bunnie to walk on. With her already bad hind legs combined with slippery bare wood she was falling and sliding all over. The staircase was the absolute worse. She scared the heck out of us sliding and slipping on the staircase.

Well I had to find a solution for the steps. I looked at carpeting. I looked at various “stick on” antislip products. Then I came across your Handi-Ramp web site and discovered non skid treads. I called and discussed your product with a very helpful and informative person who stated that these treads may be a good solution.

I really liked the idea of your non skid treads. They seemed like a good solution so I ordered two treads to test on two outside steps on our back porch. The product worked well for dogs and us humans so I ordered 13 non skid treads for our second floor staircase.

The treads arrived promptly and I mounted with stainless steel screws to all steps going up to our second floor. At first Bunnie was a little hesitant to step on the treads but she overcame her fear! She quickly discovered that stepping on the treads stopped the slipping and sliding allowing her to "bound" like a dog up and down the staircase

Your Handi-Ramp non skid treads saved the day for our family and our new dog!

Bunnie can safely navigate the staircase and not cause us to panic or worry that she is going to fall. The new treads are also helping us humans – my wife and I also find the wood stairs slippery at times. Well the new treads have stopped us from slipping!

I just want to let you all know that the Handi-Ramp non skid treads really saved the day for our new dog Bunnie and us humans to! I would recommend this solution to anyone with a similar situation.

It’s been almost a year now Bunnie is much healthier and stronger now and does not fall while walking.

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.