Advice center calls for greater emphasis on accident prevention
Published: Tuesday, Jan 9th 2024, 11:20
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The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU) is calling for greater emphasis to be placed on the prevention of leisure accidents. This is because their importance is often underestimated despite the high costs.
In addition to the personal suffering, costs of twelve billion Swiss francs are incurred every year, as the BFU announced in Bern on Tuesday. The economy would lose almost eight million working days per year.
According to the BFU, 40,000 people are seriously injured every year in an accident at home, during sport or on the road. Around a thousand accidents lead to disability.
Thirty years ago, the accident statistics were still dominated by occupational accidents. Their number has now fallen by a quarter.
In contrast, the number of non-occupational accidents has risen by a third in the same period. One reason for this is that people today have much more leisure time. As a result, twice as many working people have an accident in their free time than at work.
However, significantly fewer resources are available for the prevention of leisure accidents than for the prevention of accidents at work. According to the BFU, one of the reasons why leisure accidents are often underestimated in the public perception, despite the high accident figures and drastic costs, is that many accidents occur during everyday activities.
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