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 T&C)
 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
 Heinrich’s domino model (1920s)
 Bird’s loss control model (1960s)
 Hale and Hale’s model (1971)
 Reason’s 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