It began with a noise. When David Collins received a call from his mother, Margaret, about her stairlift “making a bit of a noise”, he assumed it was a minor annoyance. “She was calm, not panicking,” he recalled. “She just said it had been jolting a little, and she was going to get it looked at.” For Margaret Collins, an 84-year-old widow living alone in her Staffordshire home, that stairlift was more than a convenience. It was her lifeline.
Margaret had been independent since her husband’s death in 2019, relying on the stairlift to navigate her two-storey house. But unknown to her or her family, a critical component inside the machine, worn down by years of use, was on the verge of failure.
The trouble escalated when Margaret called a local engineer the following day. He arrived promptly, inspected the stairlift, tightened a few screws, and reassured her. “She trusted him,” David said. “He was friendly. She even made him a cup of tea.” The engineer declared it “nothing serious” and left. Yet the real danger lay deeper within the machine: a load-bearing gear, perilously thin, had gone unnoticed and unreplaced.
Three days later, tragedy struck. On Sunday afternoon, Margaret boarded the stairlift for her usual trip upstairs to nap. “She was halfway up when it jolted, then failed,” David said. “She fell backwards. It was a full tumble down 12 stairs.” Emergency services rushed her to hospital, where doctors found a shattered hip and a severe head injury. For four days, she fought to survive, her son by her side. Her final words to him were haunting: “I thought it was fixed.” On Saturday 22nd March 2025, Margaret passed away, surrounded by her family.
Now, the Collins family is turning their grief into action, determined to spare others the same fate. David reached out to CJS Automation, a parts safety specialist firm, to amplify their warning. “We don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” he said. “We didn’t know stairlifts had internal parts that needed replacing over time. We thought a service every now and then was enough. If we’d known the danger signs, we might have caught it in time.”
Experts at CJS Automation explain that stairlift failures can be insidious. Certain components, like gears and brake units, degrade silently, showing no obvious signs until they give out entirely. “Many households assume that if a machine still runs, it must be safe,” one engineer noted. The firm stresses the importance of regular, thorough inspections beyond superficial fixes.
David’s message is unequivocal: “Don’t assume. Get it checked.” He believes that greater awareness could have saved his mother’s life. The family plans to keep sharing Margaret’s story, hoping it prompts others to scrutinise their own equipment. “If just one person gets their stairlift looked at because of this,” David said, “then maybe she’ll have saved someone’s life.”
Margaret’s death has left a void, but her family finds purpose in their campaign. They are calling for better education around stairlift maintenance, particularly for elderly users who depend on them daily. The incident raises questions about oversight in the industry and the need for clearer guidelines on when parts should be replaced. For now, the Collins family’s plea stands as a sobering reminder: a small noise can signal a deadly risk.
