🚀 go-pugleaf

Once upon-a-time a hospital (Kings College) decided to look at
pedestrian injuries caused by falls on uneven pavements.

In a 90 day period data were collected on 100 patients with injuries
attributed to tripping on uneven pavements.

The majority of injuries in the study were of a minor nature.  One of
these patients had a broken leg - and died post operatively.  The
research does not state whether this single death was directly
attributed to the fall.

Given that there were 100 people treated over 90 days- this permitted
the authors to surmise that they *may* see 400 people as a result of
such falls in a year.

This in turn leads them to surmise that with extrapolation to a
national level there *may* be upwards of 60,000 "similar" cases.

The research does not give the ages of the people in the research -
however a number were certainly over sixty 

That is all true - and it all happened twenty years ago.


The fairy story is, not what is stated above, but how some people eg
Tony Raven misrepresent this "research" (even allowing for his factor
of ten error)

"A study of admissions to Kings College Hospital in London estimates
in excess of 60,000 hospital attendances nationwide a year from trips
and falls on uneven pavements with a 1% mortality rate.  So about
6,000  deaths a year or 16 a day."


Clarification:

They certainly came no-where near suggesting that there would be 6000
deaths a year nationwide.  They mentioned no figure.

They did not even state whether the single death which they observed
was caused by the fall.  (The patient was being treated fore a broken
leg)