Minor injuries may have little to no connection with fatal injuries.
No great epiphany or diatribe here – just three readily accessible extracts highlighting that focusing on minor stuff may not give many insights into the stuff that kills.
1. “There is no discernible association between Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and fatalities”
2. “analysis of the fatalities shows that many of the causal factors would not have caused injuries prior to the fatality. Therefore, they would not be recorded as LTIs, with them remaining unidentified as issues. At best the LTI Frequency Rate is a distraction that focuses industry on the wrong safety measure, at worst it results in early warning signs being missed”
3. “Although there were no differences between SIF and PSIF [Potential SIF] cases, two factors differentiated [Low Severity Injury] and PSIF/SIF: (1) absent direct controls; and (2) absent or not followed work plan. Surprisingly, no human factors were significant”
Shout me a coffee (one-off or monthly recurring)
Refs:
1. The Statistical Invalidity of TRIR as a Measure of Safety Performance. (2020). Hallowell, Quashne, Salas, Jones, MacLean, Quinn. CSRA
2. Brady. (2019). Review of all fatal accidents in Queensland mines and quarries from 2000 to 2019. Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy
3. Bayona, A., Hallowell, M. R., & Bhandari, S. (2024). The things that hurt people are not the same as the things that kill people: Key differences in the proximal causes of low-and high-severity construction injuries. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 150(8), 04024089.
SafetyInsights.org 