One underappreciated aspect of falls is the cognitive dimension. A huge number of falls happen at night when someone wakes up, often to go to the bathroom. If

One underappreciated aspect of falls is the cognitive dimension. A huge number of falls happen at night when someone wakes up, often to go to the bathroom. If you have poor balance and you're not very strong, it takes planning and being careful to not fall. In the middle of the night when it's dark and someone is groggy, they're at their most dangerous. Older people with dementia are in an even worse position with respect to planning and safety awareness. When you put it all together, it's a recipe for an accident, and often this happens in the bathroom where there are a lot of hard surfaces that can do a lot of damage in a fall. A relative of mine has done some work in this area and worked in a number of assisted living facilities, and this is an incredibly common scenario. I bet there's a bunch of tech and/or therapy that could help in some of these dimensions that would help. Just for example, one common scenario is that someone wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn't want to turn on the light because they don't want to wake up their partner. Often if their partner has told them explicitly (sometimes after a previous fall) to just turn on the light, they won't do it. Just making that automatic and not a choice might make a difference.