Injury prevention . . . and other stories

Pedestrian injuries

Nationwide data from emergency medical services in the US show that around a third of pedestrians involved in a collision with a motor vehicle sustained serious injuries, compared with only a fifth of pedestrians who had fallen.However, because falls are much commoner than motor vehicle collisions, especially in people 50 and older, the number of serious injuries caused by falls is four times greater. The point here is that, while preventing pedestrian injuries from motor vehicles (rightly) attracts a lot of attention, maintenance of sidewalks and pavements is unjustifiably neglected (J Urban Health doi:10.1007/s11524-023-00815-x).