300:29:1 ratio, accident causation

A great many safety practitioners have adopted the premises on which the 88 10 2 ratios are based, and they apply them to this day. Of all the Heinrich concepts, his thoughts pertaining to accident causation, expressed as the 88 10 2 ratios, have had the greatest impact on the practice of safety and have done the most harm. Why harm Because when basing safety efforts on the premise that man failure causes the most accidents, the preventive efforts are directed at the worker rather than on the operating system in which the work is done. 

Heinrich recognized that other studies on accident causation identified both unsafe acts and unsafe conditions as causal factors with almost equal frequency. Those studies produced results different from his 88 10 2 ratios, and Heinrich commented on those differences. For example, he cited the National Safety Council as a resource on such studies (Citation 22). 

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