Prevention of professional risks - Slip,trip and fall accidents (STFAs)

The risk of accidents on level ground (APP) is present in all activities of daily life, and particularly in the course of professional activity. This article deals specifically with accidents on the same level as work, and how to prevent them. In order to do so, we need to shed some light on what PPAs can be in the workplace. In France and in the world of work, the term "accident de plain-pied" is used to refer to one of the forty-two classes of accidents at work (table 1 ). The common representation of these accidents, which are often also referred to as "falls on the same level", is a person falling while moving about. In fact, national statistical data on accidents at work do not reveal the circumstances in which accidents classified as FPAs occur. Occasional studies of several hundred accidents on the same level in the workplace have shown that most lost-time accidents classified as accidents on the same level are triggered by a disturbance in the victim's physical balance (slipping, tripping, bumping, stumbling, etc.). These accidents do not necessarily occur during the sole activity of moving about, and do not necessarily lead to the victim falling. More precisely, these studies seem to show that APPs are less likely to result in a fall than in an injury without a fall. A person may, for example, step on an uneven surface, suffer a sprain and not fall, or hit an object, suffer a contusion and not fall and . The few stories of particularly serious APAs presented in this text illustrate this point.

Although the term "level" evokes a flat surface, it is proposed that accidents triggered by a disturbance in the victim's equilibrium and occurring on surfaces with no break in level, or with breaks in level such as a sidewalk, steps, inclined surface, etc., should be considered as level accidents.

In the literature, other terms are used to refer to a group of accidents which include some or all of the accidents on the same level as defined above; for example, slips