ABSTRACT
Fall accidents resulting from slips are one of the leading categories of nontraffic accidents in terms of serious injuries and fatalities. They are a primary cause of workplace injury, as well as being one of the leading causes of injury-related death for the elderly aged 65 and over (Berg et al. 1997; Layne and Landen 1997). There have thus been prolonged efforts to understand the main causes of such accidents throughout the world. It has been found that the most common precipitating event leading to a fall is a loss of traction between the shoe sole and floor surface and its slip resistance is measured as a form of coefficient of friction (COF). Hence, knowledge about friction demand and the friction available has been recognized as the main key factor for the fall safety evaluation. Despite many years of investigations and fabrication of numerous testing machines, none of them is internationally adopted as a standard model yet, because each of them has some advantages and disadvantages in its design and testing performance. In fact, because each testing instrument has different concepts, systemic parameters and mechanical principles, it seems unreasonable to adopt a reference value without any citation to the instrument used for the slip resistance measures. This means that there are great debates about what constitutes a “safe” value for the COF between the footwear and underfoot surfaces.
