Harking back to his junior days, Bolt suffered a footwear malfunction in the final of the 100m, but an untied lace proved no hindrance to the athlete, who took the win in a stunning 9.69 run.
Had he not decelerated to thump his chest in celebration across the line, analysts have estimated that Bolt might have finished in around 9.55 seconds.
In daily life untied shoelaces also causes danger and hinderance.
From a young age, we are taught to tie up our shoelaces. This process should become autonomous over time, but this is not the case for everyone. There are many reasons for this statement:
- Age- Little ones learn the skill of tying shoes at their own pace, some takes longer than others
- Medical condition- Due to physical restrain it is impossible for patients to tie their own shoes.
- Mental condition- some people cannot master the ability to tie laces
- Laziness- Some people are just to lazy….
All of the above puts people more prone to risk of falling
Workplaces across the UK are taking extreme measures to ban shoe laces in an effort to reduce injury in a workplace. Improper tying of shoe laces can be hazardous to health as it increases the risk of trips and falls. Loose shoe laces can be easily tripped over or caught in machinery and therefore pose a risk to health. This can result in bruises, lacerations and in some cases, death. Entanglement of laces in machinery can pose a hazard to health. Loose laces can become trapped in machinery which can cause injury and result in amputation.Visionzer, the Workplace Safety and Health Council of Singapore produced a video of a dad that lost his arm due to untied shoelaces. “Workplace accidents hurt your family the most”. This powerful video stresses the danger of shoelaces.
Let’s have a look at a few accidents that occurred in the workplace:
- Jeffrey Lafon worked for Iron Tiger Logistics in Ohio. His job involved moving new trucks onto trailers for delivery to customers. In October 2013 he was boarding a company shuttle, when he tripped on his untied shoelaces and fell, injuring his shoulder. The sole cause of the injury was Lafon's indifference to the state of his laces. He was a walking hazard and his employer had nothing to do with it.
- A freak accident involving an untied shoelace sent a little Belmont girl to Stanford hospital with a very serious injury. It was a lunchtime accident last Friday, that sent 7-year-old Sophia to Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford for nearly a week.
"I tripped on my shoe lace, and fell on the curve, and I hit my side on it," said Sophia Angelini’s. She went to the school nurse's office because of the pain, and because she had thrown up, her parents were called to take her home. They thought it was probably something minor, but the vomiting continued. And the trips for care started. First to an urgent care centre, then a trip to an emergency room before taken to Stanford. "When we saw the CT scan, we were pretty floored. We didn't even know that was possible, that you could break a piece of your kidney off," Sophia's mother, Sara Angelini said but it happened to Sophia and something needed to be done to save her kidney. - On 10 Aug 2015 Mirror news reported A 13-year-old boy has lost his left leg after getting caught in an escalator and suffering horrific injuries. The teen had been at a shopping mall with friends and joined the moving stairs unaware his shoelaces had come undone. The lace got caught in the mechanism and dragged the boy into the moving metal. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital in a serious condition. Doctors battled to save his leg, but the entire limb was amputated.
- Researchers recently studied the cases of 3,000 kids brought into the emergency room of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. According to a report in Working Mother magazine, more than 1,000 cases were related to loss of footing. A whopping 67 percent of these falls were attributed to untied shoelaces.
Why put yourself and your family in danger? At E3 our Elastic no tie shoelaces and silicon laces are the rescue to the danger that can be lurking wearing traditional laces. Our laces come in kids and adult sizes, in a wide variety of colours and a special design for the workplace. Avoid a medical bill and make use of Elastic and silicon laces to reduce the risk of danger.