Investigating Accidents
Why incidents and near misses are investigated, how immediate, underlying and root causes fit together, and a structured way to carry out an investigation and learn from it.
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6.1 Why Investigate Incidents?
Most of this course has been about managing safety to lower the chance that things go wrong. But you can lower the chance of injury and ill health without removing every risk. So you need to know what to do when things do go wrong, and how to learn from them.
Three terms matter:
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Incident | An undesired event that has caused, or could have caused, damage, death, injury or ill health. It is either a near miss or an accident. |
| Near miss | An incident that causes no injury or damage but could have done so. |
| Accident | An incident that results in injury to someone or damage to property. |
There are many reasons to investigate:
- to collect the information that you must pass to the enforcing authority
- to find the cause so that it does not happen again
- to get the information needed for an insurance claim
- to find out what the accident cost
- to find other hazards, risks and training needs
- to make sure that you comply with the law
Investigate with an open mind. An investigation gives a snapshot of how work is really done, which may not be how you think it is done, and it shows weaknesses in controls and chances to improve. The wider benefits are a safer workplace, better morale, fewer losses from disruption and down time, and useful skills and knowledge that you can use across the organisation.
Investigations into major incidents often show that a similar event had happened before without serious results. Near misses are often easier to investigate, because people speak more freely when no one was hurt, and there are usually more of them, so you can spot trends and repeats.
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