Serious injury prevention barriers

Discussions of significant conceptual barriers to serious injury prevention that must be overcome... 

One could ask the following Since the characteristics of serious injuries, the types of activities or exposures out of which many serious injuries occur, and the statistical trending concerning them have been known for some time, why have they not received more attention from the safety community There are two age-old beliefs, often promoted by safety professionals, that are barriers to making the necessary inquiry into the reality of design and engineering, operational systems, and cultural causal factors for incidents resulting in serious injury. Those beliefs, which derive from statements made in H. W. Heinrich s Industrial Accident Prevention, are ... 

Great progress in the prevention of incidents resulting in serious injury will not be made for as long as the two premises cited here remain as barriers to determining the reality of their causal factors. 

A proposed British Standard provides more usable, and appropriate, data for both reach-through openings and reach-over barriers. Two sets of reach-over data are proposed. The first is based on the existing standard and would only be suitable for low-risk situations where people are unlikely to attempt to reach the danger point. The second is aimed at preventing determined attempts at reaching dangers that have the potential to cause serious injury. The recommended reach distances are comparable with, but rather more cautious than, the data presented in Table 26.4. 

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