‘Stairs’ Misses a Step

Your article “Stair Wars” in the Sunday Real Estate Section missed a step. Both photographs showed stairs that only had a handrail on one side of the stairway. More than 90% of all stair accidents occur because the person using the stairway failed to hold on to, or was unable to grab a handrail.

This poor, but common, design is the real culprit. It makes little difference whether the steps have a pitch of 8:9 or 7:11, if people don’t or can’t use a handrail. And the sad thing is that it costs very little to install a handrail on both sides of a stairway.

Rather than force builders to spend an additional $3,000 to change the size and shape of a house to accommodate industrial stairways, they could spend $300 on additional handrails and make the stairway much safer. Let’s not promote more ridiculous laws whose sole intent is to protect stupid people from themselves. Instead, let’s write laws that encourage people to act responsibly. Let’s take one small step for the building industry, and one giant step for stair safety.

DAN FEGER, Northridge