587 Pedestrian slipping injuries compared to weather

Background Slipping injuries use to happen through the year but winter time with ice and snow increases the risk of slipping injuries. Young people use to slip more often than older ones but slipping injuries becomes typically more harmful when the person becomes older. Slipping injuries are a big problem not only economically but also because causing long sick leaves among the people on the best work age. Methods The amount of slipping injuries can be seen especially from the database maintained by Federation of Accident Insurance Institutions. That database includes injuries and accidents which have happened when walking from home to work, during work day or on way from work to home. This database is very reliable and gives a good outlook of happened injuries and accidents. Posti is a big organisation where employees are working outside when delivering newspapers (early in the morning) and magazines and other post (in the daytime). Posti has their own database that includes information about injuries and other related data. The information of slipping injuries from different sources and weather data are compared in this study. Results The level of slipping injuries is clearly higher during winter time than during summer time. There seems to be quite visible correlation between temperature and number of slipping injuries, sometimes also snowfall seems to correlate quite well with the number of daily injuries. When temperature drops below zero degrees the number of slipping injuries use to raise. Conclusions Slipping injuries are very common problem especially in countries located in places where ice and snow exist on winter time. There should be lot of potential available to decrease the number of slip injuries. This study presents the statistics of the slip injuries compared to weather. Also, suggestions are given how the awareness of the slipperiness could be improved.