Verification of usefulness of the method for determining the height of fatal falls proposed by Lau et al.

Abstract

The present report is a follow-up to our previous studies on the determination of the height of fatal falls, and it is focused on the verification of the method developed by Lau et al. The study group was extended to a total of 109 individuals, and the height of fall of each victim was calculated using the mathematical formula put forward by Lau et al. The heights of falls calculated with the formula referred to above were significantly different (in 72.5% of cases) from the actual heights, which points to limited reliability of the method under evaluation.

Keywords

• falls from height
• fatal accidents
• suicide
• height of fall
• multivariate analysis
• multiple linear regression