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One of your favorite activities as a mother might be shopping in a mall nearest you. Whether it be buying some raw ingredients for your home-cooked recipe or new toys for your kids, doing all your shopping in a physical store still beats ordering items online anytime. However, walking inside a shopping center has its share of dangers, one of which is the possibility of a slip and fall accident happening to you, most especially if you’re in a hurry to finish your shopping trip. For you to enjoy your time at the mall, here are some quick tips on how to avoid slip and fall accidents while shopping:
Watch your step whenever you’re walking inside a mall.
Malls can get extremely crowded at times, especially during weekends, holidays, and mall-wide sale events to the point where you can barely see the floor below your feet. Droves of shoppers can easily ruin certain portions of a mall’s flooring due to the high volume of foot traffic that it had to endure.
- But no matter how crowded or not a mall might get in a given day, you should always watch your step because you never know when you might encounter a wet, uneven, or chipped floor and have a slip and fall accident happen to you.
- However, watching your step while walking doesn’t mean that you should do so with your head bowed down all the time as it doesn’t exude confidence at all and leaves a bad impression to anyone who sees you doing it.
- Thus, you should walk inside a mall like most people do with your head held high and only occasional glances at the floor below your feet to check if it’s safe to step on or not.
Walk at a casual pace.
Some people consider shopping as a leisure activity. Not you though as you don’t have all day to do some shopping and you’ve got other things to take care of other than spending your precious time inside a mall. As a result, you may have walked a bit faster so that you can finish your shopping in less time compared to that of the average shopper.
- But always being in a hurry while shopping can increase the likelihood of you getting caught in a slip and fall accident as you failed to take your time and pay attention to the floor below your feet.
- So whenever going shopping at the mall, you should walk casually and plan what you want to buy there.
If the mall where you went shopping has more than one floor, use an elevator instead of an escalator.
Some slip and fall accidents happen not on the floor of a mall, but rather on any of its several escalators.
- You might have been using a mall’s escalator to climb up or down, especially if you can’t find the mall’s stairs or it suddenly got stalled.
- To save yourself the trouble of climbing up or down an escalator, you should take the elevator if the mall has one.
Don’t ignore any “CAUTION: WET FLOOR” sign that you see.
A kid might have spilled some ice cream, or another shopper might have let their wet umbrella drip all over the floor of the mall where you’re doing your shopping. After any of the janitors in the mall saw the portion of the floor where water or some other liquid got spilled, they had put up a “CAUTION: WET FLOOR” sign on top of it to warn you and all other shoppers to be careful when walking near it. If there is no sign, the experts at wattelandyork.com suggest consulting the slip and fall lawyer to make a personal injury claim.
- A “CAUTION: WET FLOOR” sign isn’t meant to serve as a mere suggestion which is why you shouldn’t ignore it at all.
- “CAUTION: WET FLOOR” signs are also usually large enough for anyone to easily see so you can’t reason out that you didn’t see it while you were walking inside the mall.
Wear slip-resistant shoes, sandals, or skid-resistant slippers.
Sometimes, a slip and fall accident while shopping happens not because of a problem on the floor of a mall but rather because of the choice of shoes, sandals, or slippers that a shopper who experienced it decided to wear.
- Some shoes, sandals, and slippers often have soles that easily wear out to the point that they become as flat as the floor itself.
- Therefore, when buying footwear to use while shopping, you should make sure to buy those that are slip- or skid-resistant as their soles are a bit rougher compared to normal ones so that you can avoid slip and fall accidents from happening to you.
According to the National Floor Safety Institute, slip and fall accidents account for more than one million trips to a hospital’s emergency room each year. The emergency room of a hospital is where you don’t want to end up after going to a mall nearest you, especially as medical and possible hospitalization costs after a slip and fall accident aren’t part of your shopping budget at all. Thus, you should read the above-listed quick tips on how to avoid slip and fall accidents while shopping so that you won’t have to spend the loose change that you received from a store’s cashier to go to the hospital. You may also click here to know more about the legal options you have.
Vicki Haskett
Vicki is a law writing enthusiast who’s had over 25 years of experience in her field. She enjoys sharing her experiences with those who want to learn more about the legal world. In her spare time, she spends quality time with her family and friends.
