Accident Definition | Accident Types | Safety Management

Accident Definition

Accident Definition: Accident is an unplanned, unforeseen, undesired, non-value added, interrupting activity which may or  may not result in personal injury / property damages.

Safety Definition

Safety is prevention of accidents which results personal  injury and property damage.

Safety Management Principle

• Safety is everyone’s responsibility
• Safety takes priority over everything else i.e. Safety First
• All industrial accidents are preventable

Cause of Accidents

Unsafe Condition

Working conditions/environment which are prone to have an accident.

Unsafe Act

People make the violation of the standard rules & met with an accident.

Heinrich Theory of Occurrence of Accidents

• For each Major accident there are approximately 329 Incidents of Minor  accidents or Near-miss accidents cases.
• Approximately 300 Near-miss cases occurred out of 3000 Unsafe Acts & Unsafe Conditions.
• Elimination of causes of Near-miss and Minor accidents will reduce occurrence of Major Accidents.

Accidents Analysis

FRANK BIRD’S THEORY OF ACCIDENT

• An accident is a mishap caused by unsafe action or unsafe  conditions or combination of both.
• Accidents do not happen on its own they are caused.
• 88% accidents are caused by Unsafe Acts/attitude.
• 10% accidents are caused by Unsafe Conditions/equipments.
• 2% accidents are caused by Natural Calamity which are not  under our control.
• An accident may not cause injury but an injury will be caused  only by an accident.

Accident Types

Accidents are majorly categories as:

1. Major/Fatal Injury Accident
2. Minor Accident (First Aid Injury)
3. Near-Misses
4. Dangerous Occurrence

Major accident will include death , loss of limb may have loss of  property or production., where the operator takes leave beyond 48 hours

Minor accident are incidents where there is injury or illness to  operator requiring immediate medical attention with or without loss  to property, where the operator returns to duty within 24 hours

Near-miss is a situation or event that might have resulted a major or minor injury or any property loss but didn’t. For example – A worker slipping on a oily floor but not falling.

Dangerous occurrence are accidents which do not cause death or  injury but loss to property or production to a huge extent (For example- Bursting of boilers, Collapse of buildings )

All Major & Dangerous accidents must be reported to the relevant Govt. Authorities like  Factory Inspector/Local authority except the minor accidents.

Domino’s theory of Accident

Imagine 5 books are kept on their sides and if the first book is  applied with a small force, will result in the last book  to fall.  (shown below)

Like that the “ Lack of supervision will lead to the contact of  Unsafe act and Unsafe condition which results in an accident  thereby injury to Employee.

Effective supervision will take care of removal of unsafe act and  unsafe conditions to prevent the accidents.