A household accident that often has devastating results, especially for elders, is slipping and falling in the bathroom.
And one of the things I dread most about eventually having to go into long-term care is that you aren't allowed to bathe unsupervised because of the risk of slipping and falling.
(Which literally adds insult to injury, because some people end up in long-term care because of a broken hip caused by slipping and falling in the bathroom!)
Both of these problems could be solved by making 100% of bathrooms completely slip-proof. Floors, tubs, showers, everything!
At this point, you might be thinking "surfaces become slippery when wet - it's just basic physics!"
But since time immemorial, humans have been inventing things to defy the laws of physics.
We have devices that allow us to see in the dark even without a light source.
Most modern kitchens contain a device that will heat food without becoming warm to the touch itself.
We've had a device that makes it possible to safely jump out of an airplane and land unharmed since long before we even had airplanes.
Surfaces becoming slippery when wet is just another physics challenge that human innovation should be able to overcome.
Googling around this idea, I did find bathroom tiles that purport to be slip-proof.
However, the fact of the matter is that people still slip and fall in bathrooms, and bathing alone is still seen as an unacceptable risk for elders in care. So either the existing slip-proof tiles are not sufficiently slip-proof or they aren't being used and slippery tiles are being used instead.
In either case, this needs to be fixed. All bathrooms should systematically and without exception be slip-proof. Just like how all cars have seatbelts by default, all bathrooms need to be slip-proof by default.
It would be a vast improvement to everyone's quality of life and, if we need an economic argument, will significantly reduce medical costs.
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