Accidents

1
Accidents

• If someone says
• I had an accident
• what assumptions do you make?

2
What is an accident?

• In the OSH setting
• Unintended and untoward event
• Unplanned, unexpected event, in a sequence of
  events it results in physical harm, injury or
  disease to an individual, damage to property, a
  near miss, a loss, or any combination of these
  effects
• A failure of a person to cope with the true
  situation presented to him.

3
Who cares?

• Victim
• Governments
• Researchers
• Employers
• Engineers, organisational psychologists,
  socioligists, quality controllers, high risk
  industries
• Safety managers and other OSH professionals

4
Accident Prevention

• Hazard Identification
• Risk Assessment
• Controls
• Tools for Occupational Health and Safety
  Management

5
OSH reasons for collecting accident information

• Analysis of past accidents, patterns and trends
• Accident investigation
• Accident notification requirements (the law)
• Insurance company requirements claims
  management
• Allocation of blame
• Collecting information accident investigation

6
Accident Investigation

• Purpose
• To prevent accidents happening in the future
• To determine the immediate (proximate) AND the
  underlying (distal or root) causes of accidents
• Methods vary
• Systematic look at all contributing factors
• Outcomes
• Focus on the root cause as opposed to the
  consequences or a scapegoat
• Conclusions linked to what actually happened
• A list of recommendations for change

7
OSH law

• Injury and illness prevention is a legal
  requirement
• Accident reporting to a competent authority is a
  legal requirement (subject to TC)
• Accident investigation is not a legal requirement
• Analysis of organisational data is not a legal
  requirement

8
The cost of work-related accidents

• 5,500 people killed annually in Europe
• 60 people killed annually in Ireland
• 500 million working days lost in EU in 1998 as a
  result of accidents
• 4.7m accidents resulted in absences of more than
  three days in EU in 1998

9
Direct costs of workplace accidents

• Employee lost time
• Medical and hospital costs
• Compensation and liability claims
• Legal costs
• Insurance costs
• Replacement costs (equipment, products,
  personnel)

10
Indirect costs of workplace accidents

• Cost of time lost by other employees who stop
  work
• Cost of time lost by supervisors
• Cost of first-aider time
• Cost of injury to equipment or spoil to materials

• Cost of interference with production
• Cost die to ensuing loss of profit
• Overhead cost of injured employee
• Administrative costs

11
Accident Statistics

• National and international
• Classification schemes
• Harmonisation ESAW, ILO
• Local
• Recording procedures
• A single major accident can dramatically alter
  accident statistics

12
Accident Causation Models

• Heinrichs domino model (1920s)
• Birds loss control model (1960s)
• Hale and Hales model (1971)
• Reasons organisational accidents model (1990s)
• There is NO universally accepted model
• Causes are generally seen to be at individual
  level or organisational level (work activity,
  working environment and organisational factors)

13
Accident Causation

• Accidents usually arise from a particular
  combination of circumstances, not from a single
  cause (but it is often necessary to attribute a
  principal cause)
• Accidents often preceded by near misses
• No one causitive factor is implicated in all
  accidents
• There are wide variations in the consequences of
  similar accidents/incidents

14
BIRD Accident Triangle (1969)
1 10 30 600
Major injury
Minor injury
Damage only
No injury or damage
15
Accident Investigation Tools

• MES multilinear events sequencing
• ECFC Events and causal factors charting
• FTA fault tree analysis
• MORT management oversight and risk tree
• STEP Sequentially timed events plotting
• SCAT Systemic causal analysis technique
• CMT causal tree method
• WAIT Work Accidents Investigation Technique
• and many more

16
Accident Research

• Accident causation models been developed since
  early 20th C
• In the past two decades accident research has
  focused on major accident analysis
• Emphasis is shifting towards ordinary and
  frequent accidents

17
Occupational Safety and Health in Ireland

• Wide variety of work situations
• Busy
• OSH is not always a priority
• OSH solutions need to be
• Easily applicable - not over-technical
• Practical and user-friendly
• Clearly defined with minimum ambiguity