Safety Step – reviewed

A recent post over at the Forest River Forums was meant to be a humorous garb. Unfortunately, it highlighted a fairly dangerous situation- one that we’ve all likely been in a time or two: on an unlevel site where the door side is the low side, your door side can often be uncomfortably high off of the ground.(In my not-so-humble opinion, this is a cardinal sin in campground design, but I understand it sometimes can’t be helped.)

In this particular case, the motorhome owner tried to mitigate the risk by putting a small fold-up stool at the bottom of the steps. I use these steps inside our camper for some of our higher cabinets, but I certainly wouldn’t want to rely on one at the bottom of steps. Especially with that much height difference. They just tip too easily. If you manage to fall while coming out of this kind of step, you’re likely to injure yourself (sprained or broken ankle, wrist or other – depending on how you come down).

In fact our very first trip in the new fifth wheel, we were in this exact situation where the site was incredibly unlevel with the door side being very low. We started with a different kind of folding stool at the bottom of our step. Mostly because I didn’t trust the small fold up kind (like shown in the top picture) and secondarily because it was all we had and we needed something.

On that trip, we ended up at a RV dealer (Gayle Kline RV) that was close to the campground that we were staying (Circle M) at for a bunch of supplies. They offered a couple of different steps, but we were drawn to the Safety Step because it had height-adjustable feet, a big foot print (15″ x 19″, apparently) and it had non-slip tread on it. They were a little spendy; I think we paid close to $99 each. But, we use them almost every trip. Either for an extra step outside of the doors or for stools for accessing the outdoor kitchen.

All told, I have no complaints about the steps.