Accident triangles

W. H. Heinrich from America had attempted amore in-depth study on near miss. He investigated more than 5,000 injuries and found that in 330 similar accidents 300 accidents caused no injuries, 29 cases caused minor injuries along with 1 caused serious injury. That is to say, serious injury, minor injury and no injury accident number ratio is 1 29 300, which is the famous Heinrich law, called the accident triangle, as shown in Figure 3. 

The safety culture action principle, behavior based attitudes theory and accident triangle principles work together to promote the change of zero accidents concept to zero accidents objective from three indispensable aspects of idea , action and methods , as is shown in Figure 4. Three principles commonly guide zero accidents concept, which is one of the key elements of safety culture, to strengthen enterprise safety management, prevent accidents and lessen accident rate, as follows ... 

Firstly, this paper describes the achievable of zero accidents theoretically, and then elaborates action principles of zero accident and draws the graphics using the action principle of safety culture, principle of attitude and behavior and accident triangle principle. At last, this paper makes an empirical study on safety objectives, safety management, and safety performance of DuPont, Fluor, Alcoa, Shell, getting the following conclusions ... 

The sides of the accident triangle that are discussed in the MORT program are the unwanted energy flow, barriers that are less than adequate to prevent or control the energy flow, and targets (persons or objects) in the energy path (Fig. 13-1). This approach is the basis for ETBA, which systematically analyzes these three factors and their interrelations. 

Figure 13-1 Accident triangle. (Source MORT Workshop. DOE/SSDC.)...

This configuration is consistent with the accident triangle (Fig. 18-8) and the definitions of incident as an unwanted energy flow and of accident as an unwanted energy flow that results in adverse consequences. 

Figure 18-8 Accident triangle. The incident , LTA barriers , and vulnerable target concept is the basis for Energy Trace and Barrier Analysis (ETBA) described in Chapter 13.

When the original models of accident causation were developed, employees were the center of the accident triangle. To some degree, employees are still being blamed for most incidents (at-risk behavior). The model depicts a sequence of events that lead to accidents. The Hein-... 

Figure 5.3 F E Bird s well-known accident triangle.

There have been various studies which have put numbers to the different categories of outcome and these are usually referred to as accident triangles. A typical accident triangle is shown in Figure 2.5.2. 

Since 1931, there have been various versions of the accident triangle, with different incident categories and different numbers. Several such... 

FIGURE 15.7 Bird s accident triangle. (Adapted from Jones, S. et al., Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, 12, 59-67,1999.)... 

Near misses - research shows that for every major event there are a corresponding number of less serious events. In 1969, Frank Bird carried out a study of accidents and what he termed critical incidents and developed his accident triangle illustration in Figure 12.2. 

A study carried out by the Health and Safety Executive into the costs of accidents showed that for the construction site under review, the direct costs were a small proportion of the total and produced a directrindirect ratio of 1 11. This ratio is commonly illustrated as an iceberg , because of the invisible hidden costs below the waterline. On the site studied over a period of 18 weeks, 120 people were working, and in that time there were 56 minor first-aid injuries and no lost-time injuries. But there were also 3570 noninjury accidents. The results for major, minor and noninjury accidents are often reproduced in the form of an accident triangle . 

The conclusion to be drawn from this and other accident triangles is that serious injuries are much less frequent than less serious ones, and of course it would be strange if that... 

Figure 8 shows the range of incidents by severity from fatal, major, over-3-day , minor injury, to non-injury accident. The five types of accident are shown in the form of an accident triangle that... 

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