SafetyInsights.org

Can serious industrial accidents be eliminated?

Oof, this was a banger read – from 1917. Talks about:

·        Focusing on effective workplace design and engineering – not just machine guarding

·        Not focusing on “careless” workers and such stuff

·        Focusing on the severity of incidents and not just their frequency

·        The primary duty of the employer should be to make the workplace safe rather than trying to “educate the men to avoid unsafe conditions over which they have no control” or shift responsibility

·        And even when one analyses the accidents of which “those causes are more affected by personal care on the part of the worker, it is evident that while accident reduction of great importance has occurred, it does not approach in significance that arising from the control of the causes …which must be met by engineering revision”

Quotes:

·        “Up to very recently emphasis has been placed primarily upon the frequency of accidents rather than upon their severity”

·        “The safety movement has dwelt unduly upon the carelessness of the worker and has stressed too little the importance of safe tools, safe machines, safe practices, and safe construction”

·        “carelessness and ignorance on the part of the worker are undoubtedly responsible for many accidents but chiefly for the accidents of a minor character”

·        “This belief took root the more readily since the idea that accident is largely due to the reckless behavior of the workman is an ingrained notion inherited from the days when the slightest “contributory negligence” barred the victim from recovery”

·        “It may be said that if personal carelessness could be entirely eliminted the effect upon the number of fatal and serious accidents would not be great so long as the structural engineering and organization defects are left unchanged”

·        “The success in reducing accident frequency was immediate and extraordinary. The natural result was to concentrate attention upon organization as the chief factor in accident prevention”

·        “The wide prevalence of the view which attributes the accident largely to the worker, when he is at best but a contributing cause”

Paraphrasing Sidney Dekker‘s words: is it 1917 yet?

Ref: CHANEY, L. W., & Hanna, H. S. (1917). CAN SERIOUS INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS BE ELIMINATED? Monthly Review of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5(2), 1-16.

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Study link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41829364?seq=1

LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/benhutchinson2_can-serious-industrial-accidents-be-eliminated-activity-7294105072710402049-8h4p?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop