Document B8rgYQgB5NBw4anrwB8Q0274L

4--Inspection and Control Procedures By carefully selecting a representative sample of persons, the safety professional can judge the level of safety performance of the entire system at that particular time The object is to discover factors which have con tributed to an actual or potential loss-produc ing accident What the technique can do A two-year study evaluating the usefulness of the critical incident technique was recently conducted at a large manufacturing plant in New Jersey The 187 different unsafe acts and conditions that were identified revealed that the causes of no-injury accidents were the same as the causes of injury type acci dents and that future injury type accidents can be predicted from an analysis of "near-misses " It was also found that 52 percent more unsafe acts and conditions were revealed by the crit ical incident technique than were identified by the accident records compiled during the two-year period studied The results of this study show that 1 The critical incident technique dependably reveals causal factors m terms of errors and/or unsafe conditions that lead to in dustrial accidents 2. The technique is able to identify factors associated with both injury and no-injury accidents 3 The technique reveals a greater amount of information about accident causes than do presently available methods of accident study The technique provides a more sensibve measure of total accident per formance 4 The causes of no-injury accidents as identi fied by the critical mcident technique can be used to identify sources of potentially injurious accidents 5 Use of the critical mcident technique to identify accident causes is feasible That the critical mcident technique is sensi tive to accident problems which have a po tential for accident loss, but have not yet pro duced a loss, is an important advancement in our ability to measure industrial safety performance The existence of an injury or property damage loss is no longer a necessary condition for appraising safety performance Accident situations can now be identified and examined "before-the-fact" instead of "afterthe-fact," m terms of their injury-producing or property-damaging consequences "Behavior sampling," similar to the critical incident technique, is described m Chapter 11, "Human Behavior and Safety " References Bethlehem Steel Co , Bethlehem, Pa Our Next Step to Zero, "Instructor's Guide to Supervisors Safety Program," 1964 pp 122-133 Bird, Frank E and George L Germain Damage Control New York, N Y , American Man agement Assn, 1966 Firenze, Robert J Guide to Occupational Safety ir Health Management Dubuque, la , Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co, 1973 Fletcher, John A The Industrial Environment Willowdale, Ontano, Canada, National Profile Ltd , 1972 Fletcher, John A , and Douglas, Hugh M Total Environmental Control Willowdale, On tano, Canada, National Profile Ltd , 1970 Heinnch, H W Industrial Accident Prevention, 4th ed New York, N Y, McCraw-Hill Book Co,1959 Hopkins, Stuart K "Voluntary Standards at the Crossroads," Nattonal Safety News (Apnl 1967) Johnson, W G "The Role of Change in Accidents," Nattonal Safety News (November 1973) 102