This article was originally published in the March 1999 issue of Safety and Health, the journal of the National Safety Council. 20 percent of injuries are the result of surface falls.
Reductions are due in part to improvement in products and materials.
But slips still cause injuries and death and we can do more to understand their causes. It's hard to believe, but things are improving. The relationship of the foot to the surface is called traction or friction. Friction is the resistance to lateral movement caused by the contact between two surfaces. Dividing the horizontal force by vertical force, we get a number called the coefficient of friction.