Are ALL accidents preventable?

Great Debates
1

An Accident is defined (at least in Yahoo’s dictionary) as:

IMHO, the common perception is “Accident’s happen, if they were planned or practiced they would not be called accidents”. However, at work we use a Behavior Based Safety program that teaches “All Accidents are preventable”. This is expanded to include home safety as well as industrial safety, with the end result being a “Total Safety Culture” and no more accidents anywhere. The Bottom line to this is that all accidents arise from either:

  1. Unsafe conditions (that are repairable)
    or
  2. Unsafe actions (that are avoidable and usually well rehersed)

My question for debate is: Is this true in the every day world? Are all (or even most) accidents preventable? If not, what accidents are unavoidable? And, if true, would a great stride be made in fighting ignorance if this kind of thinking caught on? Would insurance companys have a vested interest in promoting (or suppressing) this kind of belief?

–Working accident free since… err… what time is it now?

2

In a theoretical sense? Yes. In a practical sense? No.

The problem is that we don’t have perfect knowledge. OTOH, the makers of this:

know that they cannot actually succeed. However, going for “slightly fewer accidents” is not nearly as eye-catching as “no more accidents, ever”. I expect they simply believe it’s better to exaggerate. Besides, with diligence we can drastically reduce accidents all around.

3

I agree with Smiling Bandit.

Also, when looking at incident reports of most any kind of workplace accident there is a critical point where, often, a simple, regular practice is ignored - that leads to tragedy.

Or, to put it a different way, accidents can often be reduced to three basic causes:

[ul]
[li]Personnel error. Where someone involved in the accident had a brain fart. This is where the Darwin Awards come in. Or the famous phrases from incident reports of “Pilot Error” or “Operator Error.” These sorts of error account for 90-95% of all accidents. [/li][li]Procedural error. This is where the operators on the scene were operating the equipment with approved procedures, but because of some error when the procedures were set down, an accident occurred. The few I’ve seen of this kind are often grammatical mistakes in directions that allowed for misinterpretation of the intended actions. I really think this is a kind of personnel error, too - just not one of those persons actually on the scene. This is the most rare cause of an accident, and accounts for less than 1% of them.[/li][li]Material failure. This is where the accident happened because, say, the pipe burst, or the fuse blew, or something else failed of a material nature. Often nothing can be done about material failures. Sometimes, however, they can be reduced to the other two kinds of failure if proper maintenance could have prevented the material failure. (Changing out fuses before they reach their Mean Time to Failure, for example.) This accounts for from 4 to 10% of all accidents. [/li][/ul]
Most safety programs then, focus on eliminating personnel error from the accident chain. Not all accidents will be eliminated if personnel error is eliminated - but the vast majority will be.

4

Incidents and accidents are not the same, incidents cannot be prevented, thus structural faliures will occur, floods happen etc.

Accidents are different, because an accident is not just the incident, it includes the circumstances that lead up to the incident, the conditions that make it worse and the failures of people and systems in recognising what could go wrong, how to prevent or minimize loss, and finally the accident includes the consequencies, and this can include loss of life, health money or business.

Its why we carry out risk assessments, what is most likely to go wrong, what would be the consequencies, how can it be prevented or the damage minimised etc

Accidents are almost always a chain of events that conspire together, so you might have a number of safety systems, such as making sure an electrician removes fuses and locks them away before working on a large machine, but it may be that fuses have blown without explanation on other occasions and the night shift keeps a few for when the sparky isnt there.
This leaves a set of fuses available to an unqualified person to fit when the machine stops, add to this perhaps a very high production rate, coupled with high production bonuses, supervisors who do not listen and are pushy and then untrained workers who are not aware and who would be responsible ?

The answer often revolves around work procedures, such as time pressures and bonuses instituted by the mangement, along with poor controls to ensure correct disabling of equipment and overseeing of the operation, and it would also include the person refitting the fuses, the electrician for not insisting on a permit to work system and just about anybody around. It could even be partly the equipment manufacturer for installing the machine with fuses that were right on the limit and so making them prone to false blowing out.

One change to the whole chain and the accident might not occur.

What tends to happen is that safety systems have several control measures built in, but these can be compromised by practical realities, ignorance, lack of training etc.

If we had perfect knowledge, than we could prevent all accidents, but only if we play our part and not leave it to someone else.

Some folk will just insist on their democratic right to be killed, think of the evacuation during the Mt St Helens eruption when a few folk refused to leave, despite being informed of the serious dangers.

More generally, we cannot live our lives in a total safety environment, we do derive a certain satisfaction from some sorts of risks that we face and overcome, and we would just stultify if we lived too safe an existance.

At times the persuit of knowledge itself brings unforseen risks, Marie Curie was eventually killed by the radiation she worked so hard to purify, as is believed happened to Rosalind Franklin(who died of cance at age 37) with her X-ray crystallography which was absolutely instrumental in allowing Cricks and Watson to discern the shape of D.N.A before others could beat them to it.

Think of your average American football game, its not likely someone will be killed, but serious injury is never far away, and both the fans and the players get a buzz from the playing, the winning and the risking the possiblity of losing and injury.

How far do you think we should take risks, and how far we subject others is another point, think of some situations where people were subjected to risks that perhaps they should not have been, but yet they benefitted, is that a moral thing to do to non-volunteers, or are some circumstances so special that we do have to subject unwilling participants to risks because the benefits are so great, or perhaps there is an evil so urgent and dangerous that it is imperative that we put people in such dangerous straits.

I think we all have a built in ‘risk-o-meter’ and for some it is very sensitive, and for others it gives that buzz of adrenalin when it goes to certain level, but its when we ignore it or switch it off completely that things tend to go wrong.

5

You can always reduce risk, but there’s a trade-off, and there comes a point (of diminishing returns?) when what you have to give up (in convenience, or standard of living, or safety in other areas) isn’t worth the little extra safety you get. For example*, we could make air travel significantly safer than it currently is, greatly reducing the chance that planes will crash, etc., but to do so would make air travel more expensive, which would result in lots of people choosing to drive rather than fly, resulting in more crowded highways and more auto accidents.

6

You can try to change a safety culture by saying that “All accidents are preventable”, but in a practical sense all accidents can be prevented only if you spend enough resources in doing so. It is a catch-phrase that helps managers implement safety systems.

The term ‘accident’ can mean different things to different people, though it usually is considered a harm event involving a person or persons, either as the source of harm, vector of harm or victim of harm. ‘Accident’ often carries with it an implication that it is inherently preventable - as per your phrase. In risk management we avoid the use of the term ‘accident’, and use ‘incident’ and ‘event’.

A comet slamming into earth and wiping out a large proportion of life would be an event that could, in theory, be prevented by putting in place some advanced technological solution. You wouldn’t normally call this an ‘accident’.

Looking at preventing a harm event in practice, we need to determine the amount of effort and resources that is practicable to spend on minimising a certain risk. Other posters have illustrated this point with examples. The important word here is practicable. This relates to the effort for return. First the level of risk is assessed, by considering liklihood and consequence, then a decision is made (cost/benefit analysis - preferably by an other party than that who performs the assessment) as to how much effort/resources to control the risk based on the level of risk.

Casdave. You sound like you know what you are talking about. You say incidents cannot be prevented. My understanding of an incident is an event that could lead to harm, but does not. Like a harm event, the risk of an incident occuring can be managed.

7

Oops, the asterisk was because I was going to footnote this example: it isn’t original with me; I stole it from this book. The basic point, though, is one I’ve seen made several places.

Back to the OP, I agree that “all accidents are preventable” is false, but it’s closer to the truth than a shrugging “accidents happen and there’s nothing you can do to prevent them.” Many if not most accidents can be traced back to somebody acting unsafely, doing something they shouldn’t or not doing something they should’ve.

8

My understanding of an incident that could have caused harm is that is called a ‘near miss’, and it is mere chance that the near miss did not cause harm, for example and underspecified crane sling snapping and the load falling, it may not cause harm if the load had little value, or cannot be damaged in this way, but the only reason there was no injury was that the lifting marshall was standing well away.

An incident might not even present any risk of harm, such as an item in a test bay disintegrating under duress even though the destruction was not intended, but the incident might provide valuable information about structural strength which may be used to set safe working limits etc.

The ,moral problem arrives when we make value judgements about the risk to which we are prepared to expose others.

I am not at all sure wether it is desirable to prevent all risk of harm, even if we could, people are risk takers by nature and I wonder how far we should intervene in trying to prevent others harming themselves in risky ventures.

9

My understanding of a non-harm incident is also as a “near-miss” although the paperwork and review for discipline are the same. Both are used to generate methods to prevent recurrance.

Personally I think all accidents are preventable and, although certain incidents are unavoidable (weather, integrety failure, act of God, etc.) most can be safe guarded with awareness and forthought.

There was a show on The Discovery Channel called The Deadliest Catch about the risk involved with crab fishing, reportedly the riskiest profession around. On one hand, I suppose to prevent harm to fishermen, we could all stop eating wild caught crab, eliminating risk but also eliminating jobs and being detrimental to their and our quality of life. On the other hand, there are many who are completely unaware (I would hate to think apathetic, but probably that as well) of the inherent risk for this venture and would provide enough of a market to make the risk equitable.

I think it might come down to, not how much risk we are willing to expose ourselves and others to, but ultimatly how much accountability we are willing to take for our decisions. All incidents causing harm or property damage may not be preventable, but a viable safety culture may do better by promoting responsibility and accountability as (at least) equal to prevention.