Accident Investigation

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UnitI.pdf

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Course Learning Outcomes for Unit I

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Identify key benefits of conducting accident investigations.

2. Describe the accident investigation process. 2.1 Explain the differences in accident categories.

Reading Assignment

Chapter 1: What is an Accident?

Chapter 2: An Accident Happens: What Do You Do? How Long Do You Do It?

Access the resource below, and read pp. 1-5:

Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (2015). Incident [accident] investigations: A guide for employers. Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/dte/IncInvGuide4Empl_Dec2015.pdf

In order to access the resource below, you must first log into the myWaldorf Student Portal and access the Business Source Complete database within the Waldorf Online Library. To reduce the amount of results you receive, it is recommended to search for the article by title and author.

Boraiko, C., Beardsley, T., & Wright, E. (2008). Accident investigations. Professional Safety, 53(9), 26-29.

Unit Lesson

The goal of any safety and health program is to prevent injuries, illnesses, and property damage. When one of these unwanted events happens, it is no surprise that it may be seen as a failure of the safety program, the safety manager, or the organization itself. After all, accidents are preventable, right? Think about that for a moment—do you believe that all accidents are preventable? Was there a time in your life where you tripped over your own feet for no apparent reason and stumbled or fell? What could you have done to prevent this from happening? Could you even foresee it happening? Is the solution to pay attention to where/how you are walking? How would you do that? The reality is that you probably shrugged your shoulders and said, “Well, that was a dumb thing to do,” and, most likely, you moved on without making any changes to the way you walked. The reality is that something caused you to stumble and fall; you just cannot identify it (or you do not want to take the time to identify it).

While it is likely true that all accidents are preventable, finding and correcting the causes is not easy. Some might even say that accidents are inevitable. We know that we cannot reduce risk to zero, so there is always a probability, however small, that an accident will happen.

Before we continue, perhaps we should look deeper into what we mean by an accident. A simple definition of accident would be an unplanned series of events that result in injury, illness, or property damage (Oakley, 2012). Note that the definition does not indicate how serious the injury, illness, or property damage would be but, rather, includes everything from minor bumps and bruises to fatalities. It includes one dollar’s worth of property damage to millions of dollars’ worth of damage. The key to the definition is the word “unplanned.” We could also use the words unexpected, undesired, or unwanted. Some organizations use terms like mishap or

UNIT I STUDY GUIDE

Introduction to Accident Investigation

https://www.osha.gov/dte/IncInvGuide4Empl_Dec2015.pdf

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title

incident rather than accident, citing that the word accident implies that nothing can be done to correct the problem—hence the saying, “it was just an accident.” Different terms are sometimes used to differentiate injuries from property damage or to discern serious injuries from minor injuries. For consistency in this course, we will be using the term “accident” for all of these unwanted events, regardless of severity.

Every accident provides an opportunity to identify conditions, processes, or practices that, if corrected, would aid our overall accident prevention efforts. A well-designed accident investigation process ensures that causes are identified without bias or blame, and effective measures to eliminate or control the causes are identified and implemented.

Most safety practitioners divide accidents into categories based on severity. A typical list in order of decreasing severity might resemble the following (Oakley, 2012):

 fatality or major property damage,

 major injury,

 minor injury, and

 near miss.

Accidents of lower severity are often considered precursors to accidents of greater severity, so there is a prevention benefit to investigating all accidents. The severity can be used to determine the depth of the investigation and who will conduct it. You probably would not want to expend the same resources investigating a near miss as you would a fatality, but you also would not want to completely ignore the near miss.

The effectiveness of any accident investigation depends on the knowledge and experience of the investigator. Workplace accidents are, statistically speaking, a rare event, considering the millions of man hours worked every year. Many safety professionals will never have the opportunity (or misfortune) to investigate a fatality. This is a good thing, of course, but it creates a dilemma—how does one acquire the necessary knowledge and experience? Certainly, this course will help, but it does not provide a cookbook or checklist solution.

Each accident scenario is different and can be approached from many different angles. An organization’s safety culture, or lack of safety culture, may also affect how accidents are investigated. For some organizations, a team approach to investigation may work best, especially for serious accidents. Supervisors are often tasked with conducting investigations of accidents that happen within their work crews, but this approach has some drawbacks. If accidents are rare events at the organizational level, they are even rarer at the worksite level, so supervisors will get fewer opportunities to improve their skills. In addition, causal factors may lead back to the supervisor, so there could be a significant bias in how the investigation is conducted.

Accident investigation is a reactive process that happens only after an adverse event, but that does not mean the process cannot be planned in advance. Having a pre-accident plan that defines roles and responsibilities in the accident investigation process will reduce the time needed to conduct the investigation and increase the overall effectiveness. The plan should include the following:

 what accidents are to be investigated,

 who is responsible for the investigations,

 first responder actions,

 lead investigator actions,

 team member actions,

 accident analysis methods,

 documentation and reporting requirements, and

 timeline for the process.

Each individual with responsibilities in the accident investigation process should have a copy of the plan. The first action to take when notified of an accident should be to refer to the plan. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management has an excellent example of a pre-accident plan at the following link: BLM Pre-Accident Plan.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CD0QFjAEahUKEwje9MWoweXHAhUTNYgKHV6FD00&url=http://www.ntc.blm.gov/krc/uploads/330/Pre-accident%20plan.doc&usg=AFQjCNGxgieXo0lY4NVenC6NQDdbf3Np9Q&sig2=ql0gJIxK-8Kh

UNIT x STUDY GUIDE

Title In the next unit, we will examine various theories of accident causation that can be used in the investigation process. In subsequent units, will we outline the investigation process and use some real-world scenarios to which the theories can be applied.

Reference

Oakley, J. S. (2012). Accident investigation techniques: Basic theories, analytical methods, and applications (2nd ed.). Des Plaines, IL: American Society of Safety Engineers.