ACCIDENT CAUSATION THEORIES AND CONCEPTS

THEORIES OF ACCIDENT CAUSATION

There are several major theories concerning accident causation, each of which has
some explanatory and predictive value.
 The domino theory developed by H. W. Heinrich, a safety engineer and pioneer
in the field of industrial accident safety.
 Bird And Germain’s Loss Causation Model
 Human Factors Theory
 Accident/Incident Theory
 Epidemiological Theory
 Systems Theory
 Behavior Theory
 Combination Theory

HEINRICH'S DOMINO THEORY

The first sequential accident model was the ‘Domino effect’ or ‘Domino theory’
(Heinrich, 1931). The model is based in the assumption that:
-the occurrence of a preventable injury is the natural culmination of a series of
events or circumstances, which invariably occur in a fixed or logical order … an accident
is merely a link in the chain.
This model proposed that certain accident factors could be thought of as being lined up
sequentially like dominos. Heinrich proposed that an:
… accident is one of five factors in a sequence that results in an injury … an injury is
invariably caused by an accident and the accident in turn is always the result of the
factor that immediately precedes it. In accident prevention the bull’s eye of the target is
in the middle of the sequence – an unsafe act of a person or a mechanical or physical
hazard .
Heinrich’s five factors were:
• Social environment/ancestry
• Fault of the person
• Unsafe acts, mechanical and physical hazards
• Accident
• Injury.
Extending the domino metaphor, an accident was considered to occur when one
of the dominos or accident factors falls and has an ongoing knock-down effect ultimately
resulting in an accident.

Domino model of accident causation (modified from Heinrich, 1931)

Heinrich’s Dominos –The Process

1.A personal injury (the final domino) occurs only as a result of an accident.
2.An accident occurs only as a result of a personal or mechanical hazard.
 3.Personal and mechanical hazards exist only through the fault of careless persons or
poorly designed or improperly maintained equipment.
4.Faults of persons are inherited or acquired as a result of their social environment or
acquired by ancestry.
5.The environment is where and how a person was raised and educated.
Based on the domino model, accidents could be prevented by removing one of
the factors and so interrupting the knockdown effect. Heinrich proposed that unsafe acts
and mechanical hazards constituted the central factor in the accident sequence and that
removal of this central factor made the preceding factors ineffective. He focused on the
human factor, which he termed “Man Failure”, as the cause of most accidents. Giving
credence to this proposal, actuarial analysis of 75,000 insurance claims attributed some
88% of preventable accidents to unsafe acts of persons and 10% to unsafe mechanical
or physical conditions, with the last 2% being acknowledged as being unpreventable
giving rise to Heinrich’s chart of direct and proximate causes (Heinrich, 1931, p.19).

Direct and proximate accident causes according to Heinrich (1931)

Heinrich’s Domino Theory –Corrective Action Sequence (The three “E”s)

•Engineering
–Control hazards through product design or process change
•Education
–Train workers regarding all facets of safety
–Impose on management that attention to safety pays off
•Enforcement
–Insure that internal and external rules, regulations, and standard operating
procedures are followed by workers as well as management.

BIRD AND GERMAIN’S LOSS CAUSATION MODEL

The sequential domino representation was continued by Bird and Germain
(1985) who acknowledged that the Heinrich’s domino sequence had underpinned safety
thinking for over 30 years. They recognised the need for management to prevent and
control accidents in what were fast becoming highly complex situations due to the
advances in technology. They developed an updated domino model which they
considered reflected the direct management relationship with the causes and effects of
accident loss and incorporated arrows to show the multi-linear interactions of the cause
and effect sequence. This model became known as the Loss Causation Model and was
again represented by a line of five dominos, linked to each other in a linear sequence.

The International Loss Control Institute Loss Causation Model (modified from
Bird and Germaine, 1985)

HUMAN FACTORS THEORY

Heinrich posed his model in terms of a single domino leading to an accident.
The premise here is that human errors cause accidents. These errors are categorized
broadly as:
•OVERLOAD
-The work task is beyond the capability of the worker
1. Includes physical and psychological factors
2. Influenced by environmental factors, internal factors, and situational factors
•INAPPROPRIATE WORKER RESPONSE
-To hazards and safety measures (worker’s fault)
-To incompatible work station (management, environment faults)
•INAPPROPRIATE ACTIVITIES
-Lack of training and misjudgement of risk

ACCIDENT/INCIDENT THEORY
Extension of human factors theory. Here the following new elements are introduced:
•Ergonomic traps
–These are incompatible work stations, tools or expectations (management
failure)
•Decision to err
–Unconscious or conscious (personal failure)
•Systems failure
–Management failure (policy, training, etc.)

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL THEORY
Epidemiological accident models can be traced back to the study of disease
epidemics and the search for causal factors around their development. Gordon (1949)
recognised that “injuries, as distinguished from disease, are equally susceptible to this
approach”, meaning that our understanding of accidents would benefit by recognising
that accidents are caused by:
 -a combination of forces from at least three sources, which are the host – and
man is the host of principal interest – the agent itself, and the environment in which host
and agent find themselves.
Recognising that doctors had begun to focus on trauma or epidemiological
approaches, engineers on systems, and human factors practitioners on psychology
Benner (1975); considered these as only partial treatments of entire events rather than
his proposed entire sequence of events. Thus Benner contributed to the development of
epidemiological accident modelling which moved away from identifying a few causal
factors to understanding how multiple factors within a system combined. These models
proposed that an accident combined agents and environmental factors which influence
a host environment (like an epidemic) that have negative effects on the organism (a.k.a.
organisation).

A generic epidemiological model (modified from Hollnagel, 2004, p.57)

SYSTEMS THEORY
Accidents arise from interactions among humans, machines, and the
environment.
- Not simply chains of events or linear casuality, but more complex types
of casual connections.
Under normal circumstances chances of an accident is low. Rather than looking
at the environment as being full of hazards and people prone to errors, system safety
assumes harmony (steady state) exists between individuals and the work environment.
Safety is an emergent property that arises when components of system interact
with each other within a larger environment.

Systems Theory Applied to Transportation Engineering

Road accidents are seen as failures of the whole traffic system (interaction
between the three elements) rather than a failure of the driver.
•The driver is a victim –this assumes the demands that the traffic system puts on
the driver is too complex for the driver’s limited capacity to process information.
 •As a result of this assumption the system must be designed to be less complex,
which prevents errors from occurring.
•“The energy and barriers perspective”: The system must also reduce the
negative consequences of errors, i.e., introduce safety margins that allows the driver to
incur an error without being hurt too seriously.

BEHAVIORAL THEORY
Often referred to as behavior-based safety (BBS)
7 basic principles of BBS
–Intervention
–Identification of internal factors
–Motivation to behave in the desired manner
–Focus on the positive consequences of appropriate behavior
–Application of the scientific method
–Integration of information
–Planned interventions

COMBINATION THEORY
•Accidents may/may not fall under any one model
•Result from factors in several models.
•One model cannot be applied to all accidents

SOME CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS

 Drugs and alcohol are the root or a contributing cause of many workplace
accidents every year. Approximately 77 percent of drug users are employed, and
more than a third of all workers between 18 and 25 are binge drinkers.
Alcoholism alone causes 500 million lost days annually.
 Clinical depression is an invisible problem in the workplace. However, it can be a
major cause of accidents. One in 20 people suffer from clinical depression, which
is the root cause of more than 200 million lost workdays annually.
 Management failures are another leading cause of accidents on the job. If
management is serious about workplace safety and health, it must establish
expectations, provide training, evaluate employee performance with safety in
mind, and reinforce safe and healthy behavior.
 There is a strong correlation between obesity and injuries, suggesting a need to
promote optimal body weight as an injury prevention strategy.

REFERENCES:
http://wps.prenhall.com/chet_goetsch_occupation_7/139/35769/9157107.cw/-/9157132/inde
x.html

http://www.iloencyclopaedia.org/part-viii-12633/accident-prevention/92-56-accident-
prevention/theory-of-accident-causes

http://www.uh.edu/~jhansen/ITEC4350/GoetCh3.htm
https://www.ohsbok.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/32-Models-of-causation-Safety.pdf

https://risk-engineering.org/concept/Heinrich-dominos

https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1776&context=publication