Two Minnesota friends — Margaret, 79, and Davis, 84 — are a hearty pair who take an exercise walk for an hour each day. Then they return home to a kitchen that is an accident waiting to happen. On the floor are loose runners — beautiful rugs, to be sure, but a fall hazard for people of any age and especially risky for those over 65.

They did place slip-resistant mats under the rugs, which helped some. But the rugs still move around and can easily cause someone to trip. And when someone their age trips and falls, chances are something will break.

Falls are now the leading cause of injury-related deaths among people 65 and older, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta recently reported. The fatality rate from falls rose by more than 55 percent from 1993 to 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available. In fact, death rates from falls have risen faster than injury rates from falls, in part because people are now living to ages when frailty raises the risk that a fall will be fatal.

But neither falls nor serious injury from them is an inevitable consequence of advanced age. Brian M. Franklin, a certified athletic trainer at University Orthopedics in Atlanta, and the MetLife Foundation, in collaboration with the Atlanta centers, offer excellent suggestions for tuning up your body and your environment to prevent falls, as well as injuries from the falls that do happen.