
Surviving injuries from falling - mstats
https://mosaicscience.com/story/falling-science-injury-death-falls
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rjurney
All children should have something like a year of Ju Jitsu, which teaches
falling as a daily part of class. I had three years, and it has saved me from
injury on half a dozen occasions. On one occasion, I fell down a full flight
of stairs head first, and instinctively performed a dive roll that resulted in
no injuries and me landing on my feet and walking away from the stairs,
thrilled at my good fortune. I'm not particularly graceful, and I've saved my
wrists from breaking by knowing how to fall flat when I tumble on the street.
Falling happens, and knowing how to fall is a basic skill all children should
learn.

~~~
tdb7893
I'm a huge proponent of having kids do Judo. It's pretty safe, teaches people
how to fall (and also defend themselves), and is amazingly good physical
activity.

~~~
Chris_Newton
Indeed. For falls from relatively low heights, just having an instinctive
reaction to protect vulnerable areas like your head and hips, to spread the
impact over as wide an area as possible, and _not_ to do things like reaching
out with locked arms can avoid or mitigate many potential injuries.

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bhickey
As a (washed up) climber, falling is something I think about a lot. It turns
out that sit harness used by recreational climbers are unsafe. In a
catastrophic fall, the harness directs force into the lumbar spine in an
anterior direction. An old study on industrial fall arrest found that loadings
in this orientation can produce spinal injury around 4kN (don't quote me on
this number, it's been a year since I read the paper.) It gets worse. If a
falling climber rotates during the fall, load will be applied left-right above
the pelvis. This orientation decreases the spinal injury threshold further.

A chest harness, on the other hand, loads the body in a vertical orientation
applying compressive force to the spine. This pushes the survivability margin
out toward 7kN and beyond the maximal loading forces you can experience in a
factor 2 fall.

~~~
yan
Unsafe for what? Almost all of the fall forces should be dissipated by a
dynamic rope, not the harness.

~~~
bhickey
Very high factor falls. A factor 2 fall can kill you even if you don't hit
anything on the way down.

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yan
If you're healthy and using a normal, dynamic rope, no it won't. It won't even
hurt. A factor 2 fall onto webbing or dyneema can totally mess you up though,
even from a couple of feet.

~~~
bhickey
Take a 60 foot 1.95 factor fall and get back to me.

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jlebar
Tangentially relevant, one of my favorite journal articles.

"Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational
challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/)

~~~
GrinningFool
I almost don't want to read it.

That way I can continue to hold the mental image of the control group jumping
from planes without parachutes.

Edit: read it. Definitely worth the read.

~~~
lovemenot
I imagine them jumping with _placebo_ parachutes. It looks just like the real
thing, but with minimal deceleration.

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strictnein
> "Scientists are now encouraging people to learn how to fall to minimise
> injury"

Learning to fall and/or crash is one of the most important skills you pickup
when you start mountain biking or skateboarding or other similar sports where
crashing and crashing hard is a way of life. The amount of freaky stuff I got
up from when I was hugely into mountain biking is somewhat mind boggling to me
now.

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toss1
Excellent article. Can attest to the great value of learning to fall well from
alpine ski racing and training experience. Learning the moves to they are
'instinctive' and happen without thinking, pull in or press together limbs so
they don't get snagged, roll, etc. Mostly, stay aware every microsecond and
keep working with whatever bits of control you retain.

Very key concept also mentioned in the article -- fear of falling increases
likelihood of falling. Work to learn to fall, don't fear it, fall well, and it
won't happen so much and won't be as damaging when it does. While I did have
my share of injuries and close escapes, decades later, the ability to react,
slip-but-not-fall, or fall well still comes in handy. I still think about
getting some formal martial arts training to add their techniques to the
skill-set.

Good to see the knowledge getting into more scientific study and therapy
situations.

~~~
maaaats
I have the same experience. I fell in almost 120km/h in a slope earlier this
year, but know how to not become a ragdoll. I was completely fine, except
having to walk far up the hill to retrieve some of my gear.

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Preemo
This gentleman fell 18,000 feet and survived.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade)

This gentleman also fell 22,000 and survived.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee)

~~~
nickpsecurity
[http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a5045/434...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a5045/4344036/)

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antoineMoPa
«Young people break their wrists because they shoot their hands out quickly
when falling. Older people break their hips because they don’t get their hands
out quickly enough. You’d much rather break a wrist than a hip.»

I once broke my wrist while landing from a unicycle fall (while trying to jump
on a sidewalk). I felt unlucky to have a broken wrist, but maybe it saved my
head.

~~~
maaaats
I think some protection gear make people not learn to fall correctly. For
instance wrist protectors for snowboard. When falling lightly without it, you
quickly learn not to save yourself by planting your hands in the snow. But
when having them, you don't get that feedback, so when a worse accident happen
your instinct is wrong.

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ythn
TL;DR - maximize deceleration time whenever and however possible - crumple
your legs into a roll if you are falling straight down or crumple your arms if
you are falling forward or backward. Also remove fall risks by wearing better
shoes and removing slippery hazards.

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shanecleveland
The martial art Aikido has a focus on falling techniques, which are used to
allow for training – To practice Aikido, someone has to be the victim, and it
is best if they remain uninjured when thrown to the ground ;)

~~~
rrauenza
Victim!? Uke is the attacker! :)

~~~
knodi123
quit nageing him.

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ryanmarsh
In military parachuting, how to fall is one of the first things you learn.

The PLF (Parachute Landing Fall) is taught as a safe way to distribute the
force of your impact with the ground gradually over more surface area of your
body as opposed to just the bottoms of your feet.

The former can bruise the hips shoulders and occasionally ring your bell, the
latter breaks ankles.

When jumping a typical static line square or circle (ie T 10-D) parachute your
descent speed (full combat load) can be as fast as jumping off the peak of the
roof of a one story home without a parachute. Your lateral speed can often be
10 knots.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Although I posted it elsewhere, what's your take on the argument between
military and flat-relaxed falling here:

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a5045/434...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/outdoors/a5045/4344036/)

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perseusprime11
The article does not prescribe techniques to fall properly.

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robotresearcher
Right at the end it does.

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codycraven
I was in tumbling as a young child and involved in wrestling for many years
after that. I've had numerous serious falls that have resulted in no injury
(other than some bruising). While others that have had similar falls have had
fractures.

I can definitely testify to the importance of making falling an instinctual
response. When I had my most recent and only fall since being a fully grown
man (30 years old, off an unsteady step ladder) I felt my body go completely
limp right before my ribs smashed into the step ladder and my subsequent
hitting of the ground. While falling I just knew I was going to be hurt,
however I ended up only having the wind knocked out of me and a slight bit of
bruising at my ribs.

I'd encourage healthy people to take up an activity that teaches them how to
fall instinctually based on my own experiences.

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BrandoElFollito
Many comments mention martial arts which help during a fall. I have 14 years
of kung fu (I am dreadful) and 20 of volleyball (both pure amateur). This
combination saved me many times, in various situations. I am also the only
player in my team who instinctively makes a roll ever time I fall for the
ball.

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p1mrx
I wonder whether it's actually good advice to hold the handrail when using
stairs. It may reduce the risk of falling, but doesn't everyone dragging their
hand across the same bar transmit a bunch of germs?

What I tend to do is hover my hand over the rail, without actually making
contact unless it's necessary.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Hopefully you are pulling your Howard Hughes routine everywhere else.

Those doorknobs are the real killers.

~~~
p1mrx
Are you implying that it's illogical to avoid some shared surfaces, if you
can't avoid all of them? I don't really have enough evidence to argue either
way, so I just avoid touching things when a convenient alternative exists.

~~~
phicoh
Maybe I'm just lucky, but form other people I only get the flu or a cold.

Maybe you can explain what kind of disease you expect to get from touching
objects other people have touched?

