A2 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1.Outline the five factors in Heinrich’s accident sequence.

 injury, caused by an
 accident, due to an
 unsafe act and/or mechanical or physical hazard, due to the
 fault of the person, caused by their
 ancestry and Social Environment.

2.How does Bird and Loftus’ theory of accident causation differ from Heinrich’s?

Bird and Loftus’ update introduced two new concepts;

 the influence of management and managerial error;
 loss, as the result of an accident could be production losses, property damage
or wastage of other assets, as well as injuries.

3. What important principle of accident causation theory does accident ratio studies
illustrate?

Accident Ratio studies. Frank Bird showed that there is a fixed ratio between losses of
different severity demonstrated with a pyramid model. Several versions of this
pyramid including: HSG96 The Costs of Accidents at Work.

Limitations
Birds findings are not uniform throughout industry and differ due possibly to cultural
differences, the level of risk and level of reporting.
May not show the extent of loss to the organisation.
No universally agreed definition of each subset accident type.

4.What useful information and benefits can internal accident reporting and recording
systems provide?
 Internal accident reporting and recording systems can provide information on
damage, injury and ill-health. The information gathered from accident
investigation, health surveillance and absence records can also be useful when
risk evaluation is required. Near miss information can show where the
potential for harm is.
 Internal accident reporting and recording systems can provde information
relevant to the issues being considered and sources will also be easy to access
and should clarification be required, questions can be posed to the relevant
people.

5.What are the purposes of accident and ill-health investigation?

  to fulfil the legal requirement;
 to determine the cost of an accident;
 to determine compliance with applicable safety regulations;
 to process workers' compensation claims;

6.What equipment might be required in order to carry out an accident investigation?

The tools that members of the investigating team may need include:
 Pencil
 Paper
 Camera
 Film
 camera flash
 tape measure
(Source: section 4.2 steps involved in accident investigation)

7.What are the four principal stages of an accident investigation?

 the accident investigators gather information

 analyse it
 draw conclusions
 make recommendations

8. With reference to HSG245 define the following terms:

Immediate cause
Underlying cause
Root cause

 Immediate cause – most obvious reason

 Underlying cause – less obvious system or organisational reason
 Root cause – initiating event or failing