The United States Access Board (ADA) is clearly complicit in the American slip and fall epidemic

Below is a letter Vice President John C Sotter composed to the Access Board on January 17th of 2025:

“Hello Access Board,

This page https://www.access-board.gov/ada/vehicles/appendix-advisory-guidance/ discussing what makes a floor slip resistant discusses values from test standards that have long been withdrawn and no longer exist, and that makes the ADA and Access Board clearly part of the problem in regards to the slip and fall epidemic in the USA. It is your responsibility to clean this page up immediately because people’s lives are at stake. I will be posting this letter to you online to let the world know that the United States Access Board is helping cause slip and fall accidents and should be held responsible for injuries to all people who slip and fall on a floor in the USA.

The coefficient of friction of flooring is no longer assessed (by scrupulous people) using static coefficient of friction (SCOF) testing methods because slip and fall accidents do not happen when a person is in a static position on a floor. That means you’re measuring how slippery a floor is to someone who’s standing still on the floor. For that reason, the ASTM was forced to withdraw ASTM F1677 and ASTM F1679 in 2006 (you can see that the ASTM now sells those standards as “historical” standards on their website, which means they are no longer active test methods.) That was almost 20 years ago. Here the reasons for those test methods being withdrawn are discussed in greater detail: https://safetydirectamerica.com/how-to-get-the-slip-and-fall-expert-witness-testimony-from-an-english-xl-vit-and-brungraber-mark-iiib-user-thrown-out-of-court/

That is where the number 0.50 SCOF came from, and these were the people that were lying in courts back in 2006 for insurance companies. They were the people that decided that 0.5 was the number that they were shooting for when defending slippery floors in court. The Access Board is clearly now helping insurance companies and the people still using these withdrawn test methods in their pursuit of getting slippery floors and the life-changing injuries they cause “off the hook”. The ADA is the problem because you are spreading misinformation.

The shady characters defending slippery floors in courts for big money did not create that 0.50 SCOF recommendation as a “safety threshold” based on any research into slips and falls, but rather they came up with that number because they found they could easily get a result above that number of ANY floor with their devices with withdrawn standards, making it possible for them to make BIG money defending slippery floors in courtrooms across the USA. The ASTM and OSHA figure this out in 2005. See here: https://safetydirectamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fed-register-Vol-71-No-11-04153575xA9B4D.pdf OSHA and the ASTM were in agreement that the instruments these people were using were not based on science and were causing avoidable slips, leading to too many deaths. The ASTM withdrew the standards and OSHA stopped relying on them for safety assessments. You are now the last problem that must clear up the misinformation you’re spreading. The United States Access Board is getting people killed.

The 0.60 SCOF number (and 0.80 for ramps) was a lie spread by the America tile industry (through their “Tile Council of North America” – or TCNA) using their now-withdrawn test method ASTM C1028. See https://www.c1028.info/

That test method was found to be a scam and almost every floor on earth was above a 0.60. This helped tile manufacturers sell their slippery flooring. For that reason, the ASTM withdrew the ASTM C1028 SCOF test method in 2014. That’s well over 10 years ago. You can verify that on the ASTM website as well. It is now a “historical” standard and is no longer in use.

Floors are now tested reliably for slip resistance using ASTM E-303-22 and the pendulum DCOF tester. The pendulum tester has a published, peer-reviewed test method in over 50 nations (including the USA) and it is agreed upon across the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and many, many other nations that a pendulum test value (PTV) of 36 is considered to be a “low slip potential” on level floors in most situations. This is based originally on research done in the 1971 where 3,500 slip and fall incidents were investigated in the United Kingdom with the pendulum tester, and the 50 years of research that followed that initial research around the world. Here is more information on the pendulum tester: https://safetydirectamerica.com/pendulumfloorsliptesting/

The ASTM E303-22 test method was updated in 2022 to more closely resemble the test method that was updated in 2021 for the European Union and the United Kingdom, and the test method published in Australia and New Zealand in 2014. The “safety threshold of 36 (which equates to a DCOF of 0.37) is agreed upon around the world, and the fact that the Access Board is unaware of that clearly makes the irresponsible recommendations you make on your website a serious problem for pedestrians in the USA.

The advice mentioned in the previous two paragraphs would help stop slip and fall accidents in the United states. However, your recommendations are part of the slip and fall problem here. Your recommendations simply confuse people and send them on a wild goose chase looking for test methods that have long been withdrawn and safety thresholds that no longer exist with modern-day reliable test devices.

Here is a letter from the Access Board written to my father many years ago stating that you had taken down all of your badly-informed misinformation: https://safetydirectamerica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Access-Board-to-Sotter.pdf After writing this letter claiming you were not responsible for the misinformation being spread about 0.50 SCOF and 0.60 SCOF being “safety thresholds”, you went back and re-published this dangerous nonsense.

You continue to create a problem on this page https://www.access-board.gov/ada/vehicles/appendix-advisory-guidance/ where you give really misinformed information about test methods that have been withdrawn long ago. YOU MUST FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY.

When the tile industry was no longer able to say that all of their tiles were not slippery based on ASTM C1028 (since the test had been withdrawn by the ASTM), the American tile manufacturers (and floor polishers and concrete polishers) needed a new way to claim all of their floors were not slippery, and the result of that was publishing ANSI A326.3 with a “safety threshold” of 0.42 DCOF. That number as well is not based on any science or research into slip and fall accidents, but rather they have found that nearly every floor on earth is able to meet this safety threshold. That is where the number came from. Recommending that test method and that safety criterion would be clearly adding to the problem and the confusion in the United States, leading to even more preventable life-altering and life-ending injuries to innocent pedestrians.

The world long ago decided that the pendulum tester is the best way to assess the slip risk of a floor in the lab and in the field, and we now rely on 50 years of research in well over 50 nations to help us identify slippery floors and remedy them. The Access Board continues to spread misinformation that gets innocent people injured and killed on slippery floors.

Please fix your website right away as people are going to emergency rooms daily for slip and fall accidents across the country, and you are clearly part of the problem that is creating the slip and fall epidemic here. The information you are providing to people is the problem itself.

Moving forward, I will advise all personal injury attorneys to include The Access Board as part of the reason why the slip happened, and The Access Board should therefore be held financially responsible for any damages. As America gets older and more and more Americans begin to have limited mobility due to their advanced age, this is now more important than ever. You are now part of why elderly Americans are dying in hospital beds after slipping on a slippery floor, cracking their hip, and then dying from an infection. This happens far too often, and the Access Board is doing all they can to increase the problem.

Let me know when you have fixed your misinformation campaign, so I consider removing this letter from my website. Thank you.

Best regards, 

John C Sotter

Vice President

https://safetydirectamerica.com/

https://safetydirectamerica.com/floor-friction-testing/

Cell: (949)933-6971

Lab address: 26705 Loma Verde

Mission Viejo, CA 92691″

Let’s see if anyone at the Access Board can do their job and stop getting innocent people injured and killed.