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The origin and development of accident causation theory

2016-07-17View Original

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At the beginning of the 20th century, industrial production around the world had already taken shape, with steam power and electric machinery replacing manual tools in workshops. Since the machines at that time did not have any safety guards and workers were not trained, working hours reached as long as 13 hours per day, leading to frequent accidents and injuries. In 1909, there were as many as 30,000 industrial deaths in the United States, with some factories experiencing a mortality rate of 150 to 200 deaths per million work hours. U.S. Pennsylvania Steel Company, 1901–1904: Out of 2,200 employees, as many as 1,600 were injured in accidents. Faced with the serious threat to workers’ lives and the indifferent attitude of business owners, the first single-factor theory, the \"theory of tendency for frequent accidents,\" emerged; it held that workers’ personality traits were the only factor contributing to frequent accidents. This clearly reflects the wrong ideas of business owners. In 1919, Greenwood and in 1926, M. Newbold argued that accidents are not distributed randomly among people; some individuals are more prone to accidents than others. Therefore, some method is used to distinguish workers with a tendency to cause accidents from others, and this is used as a basis for firing them. The drawback of this theory is that it overemphasizes the role of personality traits in accidents. In 1936, Heinrich proposed applying the domino theory to study the five sequential processes leading to accidents caused by worker injuries, namely the \"five factors in the sequence of occupational accidents.\" In 1939, FanTler and Chamber proposed that a person prone to accidents has a higher accident rate, independent of job tasks, living environment, and experiences, implying that all responsibility for accidents lies with an individual’s personality. In 1951, Abbs and Klick’s research indicated that the accident rate of individual people exhibited significant instability, and it was difficult to determine the boundaries for measuring personality types prone to accidents. Widespread criticism has led to this single-factor (trait theory of accident tendency) theory being excluded from the category of theories on the causes of accidents. In 1971, Shaw Hesekel argued that this perspective should be used only as a reference for job selection; he focused on frequent accidents and had no intention of taking into account individual personality traits. The second single-factor theory is known as the psychodynamic theory; it originates from Fulyd’s theory of personality dynamics, and holds that stimuli to workers are the cause of accidents resulting in injury to them. This theory is also absurd; it cannot prove that a specific motive will cause a specific accident. This view is mentioned here because it contradicts those who advocate for the theory of accident tendency; it does not consider an individual’s moral flaws to be inherent and stable, rather believing that unconscious motives can be changed. This theory implies that a person may belong to a group prone to accidents, and their accident rate can be reduced through education or training, without the need to remove them from their job. In the early 1960s, driven by the needs of rocket technology development, Western countries began to work on safety systems engineering. In April 1962, the United States publicly released the manual on \"Aircraft Ballistic Missile System Safety Engineering\". In September of the same year, the “Safety Standards for Weapon Systems” were formulated. The “Energy Transfer Theory,” proposed by Gibson in 1961 and further developed by Haddon in 1966, explains the relationship between injury accidents and energy, as well as the transfer of that energy to the human body. In 1965, Kolodner introduced Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) in a paper on the quantification of safety. This system security analysis method is essentially also based on the event chain theory. In 1970, Driessen explicitly developed the event chain theory into a theory of branching event process logic. Branching diagrams such as FTA are, in fact, an analysis of branching event processes. In 1972, Wigglesworth proposed an accident model in which human error is the primary cause. In 1972, Benner proposed a comprehensive concept and terminology to explain the causes of accidents, combining branch event chains with accident process chains and representing them using logical diagrams, thereby introducing the \"multiple linear event process diagramming method\". In 1974, Lawrence proposed the theory that \"perturbations\" cause accidents, namely the P theory (Perturbation Occurs), based on Bena and Wigglesworth’s accident theory. Subsequently, he developed an accident model suitable for mines operating under complex natural conditions and in continuous processes, where human error is the primary cause of accidents; this model was tested on gold mines in South Africa. In 1975, Johnson studied management errors and the MORT method, which is a new approach to systematic safety logic tree diagrams and also a graphical model for comprehensively understanding accident phenomena. In 1980, Talanch introduced the theory of change model in his book \"Safety Assessment\" ; In 1981, Yoshinobu Sato further developed, based on MORT, a theory that explains \"an accident as a continuous process\" from a perspective of change. In 1983, the Swedish Working Environment Foundation (WEF) proposed a modified version of the human behavior system model introduced by Surry in 1969, namely the WEF model. In 1991, Andersson proposed the Serley modified series model, arguing that an accident is not a \"single event\" but rather a process that can be analyzed as a series. In 1992, Wagenaar proposed six methods to encourage safe behavior in order to prevent human errors ; Based on this, in 1998 Jop. Groeneweg proposed an accident causation model for improving the management of human error. In 1998, R. Lehto and M. Miller proposed the safety information for the four stages of accident sequences and its development. In 1998, Abdul. Raouf summarized the accident causation theories into several theories of accident causes; the following introduces some influential theories of accident causation. 1) Domino theory: Based on the domino principle invented by W.H. Heinrich in 1931, it holds that “88% of accidents are caused by people’s unsafe behaviors” ; 10% of accidents are caused by unsafe behaviors, and 2% are due to natural disasters. It proposes a “five-factor accident sequence,” which has been mentioned earlier. 2) Multifactor theory: This theory holds that the occurrence of an accident may be influenced by multiple factors, namely primary causes and secondary causes, as well as a combination of certain factors that lead to the accident. According to this theory, the numerous influencing factors can be categorized into two types: one is the factors related to behavior, such as a lack of safety knowledge, poor skills, inappropriate working postures, and unsuitable physical and mental conditions of the workers ; The second is environmental factors; such factors refer to an unfavorable working environment, a high presence of harmful elements, declining safety and quality of equipment and tools, as well as a lack of safety gear. The contribution of this theory is that it criticizes the idea that accidents are caused by a single factor, as well as biased theories such as the \"worker accident tendency theory.\" 3) Energy transfer theory: This theory holds that accidents occur due to a source of hazard, and are closely related to energy conversion; for example, falling from a height involves the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy ; Electrical burns occur when electrical energy is converted into heat energy and transferred to the human body, etc. 4) The “symptoms and causes” theory: This theory holds that unsafe conditions and people’s unsafe behaviors are symptoms, representing the apparent and immediate surface causes, rather than the fundamental reasons behind accidents. Indirect causes are often the fundamental underlying reasons, such as the social environment or management failures. Accident investigations should not stop at superficial signs and phenomena; rather, they should pursue the underlying causes that led to the accident. Over the past decade or so, many scholars have agreed that the direct causes of accidents are the result of two main factors: unsafe human behavior or mistakes, and unsafe conditions or failures of equipment. The theory of intersection of human and object trajectory sequences is used to explain the direct causes of accidents. Indirect causes, such as social and managerial factors, are the underlying reasons for accidents. Studying accident causation theories can be used to identify the causes of accidents, conduct safety assessments and make decisions to prevent accidents, enhance knowledge of safety theory, accumulate safety information, and prevent industrial disasters.

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