Accident liability

Accident Proneness. Tlie old notion that certain people are accident-prone has been difficult to establish as fact. A more acceptable concept may be "accident liability," which can be related to factors tliat often are temporary and do not depend primarily on persoiuality traits, such as w ork situation or stress. 

The bill requires that even accidents that are excluded for all practical purposes, should not necessitate any incisive external emergency measures in case these accidents happen. In addition, the bill raises nuclear accident liability insurance levels, and modifies the role of the Federal Government in promoting nuclear energy. 

Viscusi, W. K. (1983) Alternative Approaches to Valuing the Health Impacts of Accidents Liability Law and Prospective Evaluations , Law and Contemporary Problems 46 49. 

Based on Article 18 of the Nuclear Accidents Liability Act (wako). 

Other behavior type models have also become popular. The life-changing units theory surmised that accident potential is situational and that those persons exposed to certain stresses or events, such as the death of a spouse, were more open to accidents. Peterson s motivation and reward satisfaction model theorized that the ability to perform the work and level of motivation impacted accident liability, hi this model, fectors such as happiness, job advancement, and other intrinsic and extrinsic reward impacted motivation. Human factor models also developed. Dr. Russell FerreU from the University of Arizona formulated the Ferrell theory. This model theorized three overall situations that lead to human error that are in a causal chain leading to an accident... 

Maycock, G., Lockwood, C. R., and Lester, J. 1991. The Accident Liability of Car Drivers, TRL Research Report 315. Crowthome, UK Transport Research Laboratory. 

Figure 6 6. The estimated effects of age and driving on accident liability. Each function is for a cohort of drivers that received their license at a given age (from Maycock et al. 1991. Reprinted with permission from TRL).

Maycock, G., C. R. Lockwood and J. F. Lester (1991). The accident liability of car drivers. TRL Research Report 315. Transport and Road Research Laboratory, Crowthome, England. 

External costs (1) radioactive emissions (2) long-term waste disposal (often already internalized) (3) accidents—liability (4) proliferation (5) avoided CO2 emissions (6) system effects (in particular, on electrical grid stability). 

Maycock, G., 1997. Accident liability— the human perspective. In Rothengatter, T. and Vaya, E.C. (eds). Traffic and Transport Psychology. Pergamon, Amsterdam. 

Discussion of and research into human error focusses on slips, mistakes, incidents and accidents and their internal and external mechanisms. Research on accident liability centers on work- or traffic-related accidents emphasizing personal variables as an explanation of the occurrence of accidents. Systems variables such as workplace design or work environment are not considered systematically. Modern human factors approaches examine the joint effects of personal, organizational and technical factors on human reliability, employing accident-independent as well as accident-centered safety analysis methods. 

Kunkel (1973) defines accident proneness as an "interindividually differing, personality constant, time-stable tendency to become involved into accidents", (p. 27). The proneness results in an interindividually different accident risk. Farmer Chambers (1926) reached the conclusion that the results of accident statistics allow to differentiate between accident proneness and accident liability. According to them accident proneness is a narrower term compared to accident liability and means a personal tendency predisposing the individual to a relatively high accident rate. Accident liability includes all the factors determining accident rates technical, organizational, and personal factors. 

Aside from the Finnish bus driver study (Hakkinen 1958) the PUTCO study is one of the most carefully executed traffic studies on accident proneness. The bus-drivers studied were assigned to the same situational risks and exposition times. Individual differences in accident liability were not obscured by... 

With respect to the results of the correlation and replacement investigations, serious doubts still remain as to whether they can be seen as supporting or falsifying accident-proneness. Some conditions under which accident liability could be supported by the studies are given below ... 

Elements of the test battery to predict individual accident liability (adapted from Harano et al. 1975). 

Harano, R.M., Peck, R.C. McBride, R.S., The prediction of accident liability through biographical data and psychometric tests. Journal of Safety Research, 1975, 7, pp. 16-52. 

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