Safety management practices and safety behaviour: Assessing the mediating role of safety knowledge and motivation

Safety management practices not only improve working conditions but also positively influence employees’ attitudes and behaviours with regard to safety, thereby reducing accidents in workplace. This study measured employees’ perceptions on six safety management practices and self-reported safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety compliance and safety participation by conducting a survey using questionnaire among 1566 employees belonging to eight major accident hazard process industrial units in Kerala, a state in southern part of India. The reliability and unidimesionality of all the scales were found acceptable. Path analysis using AMOS-4 software showed that some of the safety management practices have direct and indirect relations with the safety performance components, namely, safety compliance and safety participation. Safety knowledge and safety motivation were found to be the key mediators in explaining these relationships. Safety training was identified as the most important safety management practice that predicts safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety compliance and safety participation. These findings provide valuable guidance for researchers and practitioners for identifying the mechanisms by which they can improve safety of workplace.     

Corporate cost of occupational accidents: an activity-based analysis

The systematic accident cost analysis (SACA) project was carried out during 2001 by The Aarhus School of Business and PricewaterhouseCoopers Denmark with financial support from The Danish National Working Environment Authority. Its focused on developing and testing a method for evaluating occupational costs of companies for use by occupational health and safety professionals. The method was tested in nine Danish companies within three different industry sectors and the costs of 27 selected occupational accidents in these companies were calculated. One of the main conclusions is that the SACA method could be used in all of the companies without revisions. The evaluation of accident cost showed that 2/3 of the costs of occupational accidents are visible in the Danish corporate accounting systems reviewed while 1/3 is hidden from management view. The highest cost of occupational accidents for a company with 3.600 employees was estimated to approximately US$ 682.000. The paper includes an introduction regarding accident cost analysis in companies, a presentation of the SACA project methodology and the SACA method itself, a short overview of some of the results of the SACA project and a conclusion. Further information about the project is available at http://www.asb.dk/saca.     

The effects of safety climate on vessel accidents in the container shipping context

This study empirically evaluates the influence of safety climate on vessel accidents from a seafarer's perspective, specifically in the container shipping context. Factor analysis revealed six safety climate dimensions: management safety practices, supervisor safety practices, safety attitude, safety training, job safety, and co-workers' safety practices. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the effects of safety climate dimensions on vessel accidents in respect of crew fatality and vessel failure. Study findings indicated that management safety practices, safety training, and job safety dimensions significantly affect crew fatality incidence, and the job safety dimension has a significant influence on vessel failure. Overall, results suggest the job safety dimension has the most important effect on vessel accidents, followed by management safety practices and safety training dimensions. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for vessel accident prevention in the container shipping context are discussed.     

Management of climatic heat stress risk in construction: A review of practices,methodologies, and future research

Climatic heat stress leads to accidents on construction sites brought about by a range of human factors emanating from heat induced illness, and fatigue leading to impaired capability, physical and mental. It is an occupational characteristic of construction work in many climates and the authors take the approach of re-engineering the whole safety management system rather than focusing on incremental improvement, which is current management practice in the construction industry. From a scientific viewpoint, climatic heat stress is determined by six key factors: (1) air temperature, (2) humidity, (3) radiant heat, and (4) wind speed indicating the environment, (5) metabolic heat generated by physical activities, and (6) “clothing effect” that moderates the heat exchange between the body and the environment. By making use of existing heat stress indices and heat stress management processes, heat stress risk on construction sites can be managed in three ways: (1) control of environmental heat stress exposure through use of an action-triggering threshold system, (2) control of continuous work time (CWT, referred by maximum allowable exposure duration) with mandatory work-rest regimens, and (3) enabling self-paced working through empowerment of employees. Existing heat stress practices and methodologies are critically reviewed and the authors propose a three-level methodology for an action-triggering, localized, simplified threshold system to facilitate effective decisions by frontline supervisors. The authors point out the need for “regional based” heat stress management practices that reflect unique climatic conditions, working practices and acclimatization propensity by local workers indifferent geographic regions. The authors set out the case for regional, rather than international, standards that account for this uniqueness and which are derived from site-based rather than laboratory-based research.     

Exploring precrash maneuvers using classification trees and random forests

Taking evasive actions vis-à-vis critical traffic situations impending to motor vehicle crashes endows drivers an opportunity to avoid the crash occurrence or at least diminish its severity. This study explores the drivers, vehicles, and environments’ characteristics associated with crash avoidance maneuvers (i.e., evasive actions or no evasive actions). Rear-end collisions, head-on collisions, and angle collisions are analyzed separately using decision trees and the significance of the variables on the binary response variable (evasive actions or no evasive actions) is determined. Moreover, the random forests method is employed to rank the importance of the drivers/vehicles/environments characteristics on crash avoidance maneuvers. According to the exploratory analyses’ results, drivers’ visibility obstruction, drivers’ physical impairment, drivers’ distraction are associated with crash avoidance maneuvers in all three types of accidents. Moreover, speed limit is associated with rear-end collisions’ avoidance maneuvers and vehicle type is correlated with head-on collisions and angle collisions’ avoidance maneuvers. It is recommended that future research investigates further the explored trends (e.g., physically impaired drivers, visibility obstruction) using driving simulators which may help in legislative initiatives and in-vehicle technology recommendations.     

Bundled automobile insurance coverage and accidents

This paper investigates the characteristics of automobile accidents by taking into account two types of automobile insurance coverage: comprehensive vehicle physical damage insurance and voluntary third-party liability insurance. By using a unique data set in the Taiwanese automobile insurance market, we explore the bundled automobile insurance coverage and the occurrence of claims. It is shown that vehicle physical damage insurance is the major automobile coverage and affects the decision to purchase voluntary liability insurance coverage as a complement. Moreover, policyholders with high vehicle physical damage insurance coverage have a significantly higher probability of filing vehicle damage claims, and if they additionally purchase low voluntary liability insurance coverage, their accident claims probability is higher than those who purchase high voluntary liability insurance coverage. Our empirical results reveal that additional automobile insurance coverage information can capture more driver characteristics and driving behaviors to provide useful information for insurers’ underwriting policies and to help analyze the occurrence of automobile accidents.     

Attentional bias toward safety predicts safety behaviors

Safety studies have primarily focused on how explicit processes and measures affect safety behavior and subsequent accidents and injuries. Recently, safety researchers have paid greater attention to the role of implicit processes. Our research focuses on the role of attentional bias toward safety (ABS) in workplace safety. ABS is a basic, early-stage cognitive process involving the automatic and selective allocation of attentional resources toward safety cues, which reflect the implicit motivational state of employees regarding safety goal. In this study, we used two reaction time-based paradigms to measure the ABS of employees in three studies: two modified Stroop tasks (Studies 1 and 2) and a visual dot-probe task (Study 3). Results revealed that employees with better safety behavior showed significant ABS (Study 2), and greater ABS than employees with poorer safety behavior (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, ABS was positively associated with the perceived safety climate and safety motivation of employees, both of which mediate the effect of ABS on safety behavior (Study 3). These results contributed to a deeper understanding of how early-stage automatic perceptual processing affects safety behavior. The practical implications of these results were also discussed.     

Road accidents caused by drivers falling asleep

About 29600 Norwegian accident-involved drivers received a questionnaire about the last accident reported to their insurance company. About 9200 drivers (31%) returned the questionnaire. The questionnaire contained questions about sleep or fatigue as contributing factors to the accident. In addition, the drivers reported whether or not they had fallen asleep some time whilst driving. and what the consequences had been. Sleep or drowsiness was a contributing factor in 3.9% of all accidents, as reported by drivers who were at fault for the accident. This factor was strongly over-represented in night-time accidents (18.6%), in running-off-the-road accidents (8.3%), accidents after driving more than 150 km on one trip (8.1%), and personal injury accidents (7.3%). A logistic regression analysis showed that the following additional factors made significant and independent contributions to increasing the odds of sleep involvement in an accident: dry road, high speed limit, driving one's own car, not driving the car daily, high education, and few years of driving experience. More male than female drivers were involved in sleep-related accidents, but this seems largely to be explained by males driving relatively more than females on roads with high speed limits. A total of 10% of male drivers and 4% of females reported to have fallen asleep while driving during the last 12 months. A total of 4% of these events resulted in an accident. The most frequent consequence of falling asleep--amounting to more than 40% of the reported incidents--was crossing of the right edge-line before awaking, whereas crossing of the centreline was reported by 16%. Drivers' lack of awareness of important precursors of falling asleep--like highway hypnosis, driving without awareness, and similar phenomena--as well as a reluctance to discontinue driving despite feeling tired are pointed out as likely contributors to sleep-related accidents. More knowledge about the drivers' experiences immediately preceding such accidents may give a better background for implementing effective driver warning systems and other countermeasures.     

Associations between task,training and social environmental factors and error types involved in rail incidents and accidents

Rail accidents can be understood in terms of the systemic and individual contributions to their causation. The current study was undertaken to determine whether errors and violations are more often associated with different local and organisational factors that contribute to rail accidents. The Contributing Factors Framework (CFF), a tool developed for the collection and codification of data regarding rail accidents and incidents, was applied to a sample of investigation reports. In addition, a more detailed categorisation of errors was undertaken. Ninety-six investigation reports into Australian accidents and incidents occurring between 1999 and 2008 were analysed. Each report was coded independently by two experienced coders. Task demand factors were significantly more often associated with skill-based errors, knowledge and training deficiencies significantly associated with mistakes, and violations significantly linked to social environmental factors.     

Motorcycle accidents,rider behaviour,and psychological models

The aims of the present study were to: (a) investigate the factor structure of the Motorcycle Rider Behaviour Questionnaire (MRBQ) [Elliott, M.A., Baughan, B.J., Sexton, B.F., 2007. Errors and violations in relation to motorcyclists’ crash risk. Accident Analysis and Prevention 39, 491–499] in among Turkish riders, and (b) study the relationships between different types of rider behaviour and motorcyclists’ active and passive accidents and offences, and (c) investigate the usefulness of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), Health Belief Model (HBM), and Locus of Control (T-LOC) in explaining rider behaviours. MRBQ was administered to a sample of motorcyclists (N = 451). Principal components analysis yielded a 5-factor solution including traffic errors, control errors, speed violations, performance of stunts, and use of safety equipment. Annual mileage was related to higher number of active and passive accidents and offences whereas age was related to lower number of active and passive accidents. Stunts were the main predictors of active accidents and offences. Speeding violations predicted offences. Stunts and speeding violations were associated with the fate factor of the T-LOC, and with attitudes, subjective norms, and intention components of TPB, and cues to action and perceived severity components of the HBM. Use of safety equipment was related to the high level of perceived behavioural control and intention components of the TPB, the low score of perceived barriers component of the HBM, and the low fate factor of the T-LOC. While traffic errors were associated with the high score of perceived barriers and cues to action component of the HBM, control errors were related to the high score of vehicle and environment factor of the T-LOC.     

What does the driver look at? The influence of intersection characteristics on attention allocation and driving behavior

One of the main contributing factors with intersection accidents is lack of information due to attention allocation. In many cases, drivers fail to yield right of way to other traffic participants. One reason is that drivers have inappropriate expectations about a traffic situation. They allocate their attention primarily to certain areas of the intersection but neglect others. In a driving simulator study, the influence of intersection complexity on drivers’ expectations and their driving behavior was examined. In two T-intersections, the complexity was varied by the traffic density (low and high) using either one or two important objects: vehicles (left) with or without pedestrians (right). Additionally, the reaction to two critical incidents in close proximity of the intersections was examined. Gaze behavior, vehicle reactions, and subjective data were recorded. 40 subjects (26 male, 14 female, M = 31.0 years, SD = 11.9 years) participated in the study. Interestingly, the least complex intersections showed the most accidents which was interpreted as the result of inadequate attention allocation. It was shown that both the drivers’ attention allocation and vehicle velocity when turning off were responsible for this effect. The results contribute to a better understanding of the role of drivers’ expectation and attention allocation in the causation of intersection accidents.     

A grounded theory model for analysis of marine accidents

The purpose of this paper was to design a conceptual model for analysis of marine accidents. The model is grounded on large amounts of empirical data, i.e. the Swedish Maritime Administration database, which was thoroughly studied. This database contains marine accidents organized by ship and variable. The majority of variables are non-metric and some have never been analyzed because of the large number of values. Summary statistics were employed in the data analysis. In order to develop a conceptual model, the database variables were clustered into eleven main categories or constructs, which were organized according to their properties and connected with the path diagram of relationships. For demonstration purposes, one non-metric and five metric variables were selected, namely fatality, ship's properties (i.e. age, gross register tonnage, and length), number of people on board, and marine accidents. These were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The combined prediction power of the ‘ship's properties’ and ‘number of people on board’ independent variables accounted for 65% of the variance of the fatality. The model development was largely based on the data contained in the Swedish database. However, as this database shares a number of variables in common with other databases in the region and the world, the model presented in this paper could be applied to other datasets. The model has both theoretical and practical values. Recommendations for improvements in the database are also suggested.     

重大环境污染事故风险模糊排序方法研究

据工厂重大环境污染事故风险评价呈多指标多层次结构, 且风险性排序具有相对性和模糊性的特点, 运用模糊集理论中的权距离和隶属度概念, 并将最小二乘法加以拓展, 提出能够有效解决此类多指标多层次排序或优选问题的模糊排序方法。用于对大连市4家重点工厂的事故风险性进行评价和排序, 评价结果合理、准确。     

Sleep debt,sleepiness and accidents among males in the general population and male professional drivers

Men from the general population and male professional lorry and bus drivers were surveyed with regard to sleep habits and motor vehicle and other types of accidents. A random sample of 4000 men in the general population of Dalarna County in mid-Sweden were mailed a questionnaire and served as referents. A total of 1389 male professional lorry and bus drivers from this county responded to the same questionnaire. A total of 161 of the drivers also underwent a sleep study in their homes.The proportion of total accidents was higher among the professional drivers as compared with the males in the population, P=0.03. Reports on traffic accidents were the same in both groups, but the professional drivers reported more accidents at leisure compared with referents, P<0.0001. Accidents of any kind, traffic accidents included, among those affected by both snoring and apneas, were not reported more in either of the groups. At the sleep study, 17% of those examined received the diagnosis of obstructive sleep-apnea syndrome (OSAS).The professional drivers reported proportionally more sleep debt than the referents, P<0.001. Among referents, traffic accidents at leisure, traffic accidents while commuting and accidents at work increased in proportion to sleep debt (P<0.001, 0.006 and 0.002, respectively). The finding that self-perceived sleep debt may have an adverse effect on males in the general population and male professional drivers concerning accident likelihood should have an impact on prevention. These results stress the need to educate the general population on the importance of complying with our biological need of sleep.     

Development of a framework for the risk assessment of Na-Tech accidental events

Natural events impacting on chemical and process plants may cause severe accidents, triggering the release of relevant quantities of hazardous substances. The present study focused on the development of the tools needed to build up a general framework allowing the extension of quantitative risk assessment procedure to include the analysis of the industrial accidents caused by natural events. Specific methods and models were developed to allow the quantitative assessment of risk caused by two categories of “Na-Tech” accidents: accidents triggered by earthquakes and accidents triggered by floods. The approach allows the identification of the different damage modes expected for process equipment and of the accidental scenarios that may be triggered. The damage models developed allow the calculation of the damage probability of equipment items due to the natural events. A specific methodology was issued to take into account the consequences of the possible contemporary failure of several process units due to the impact of the natural event. The procedure allows the calculation of the overall individual and societal risk indexes including the multiple-failure scenarios caused by the impact of natural events. The overall methodology was applied to the analysis of specific case studies.     

Analysis of traffic accidents at urban intersections in Riyadh

Previous studies have shown that intersection-related accidents account for about 50% of all accidents registered annually in Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). More than half of these accidents are classified as severe. In this study, an attempt was made to investigate traffic accidents that occurred at both intersections and non-intersection sites. The goal was to analyze the nature of such accidents to determine their characteristics so that remedies could be sought or at least future research could be suggested. For this purpose, a sample of 1774 reported accidents was collected in a systematic random manner for the period 1996-1998 (651 severe accidents (accidents resulting in at least one personal injury or fatality) and 1123 property-damage-only (PDO) accidents). Conditional probability and contingency table analyses were used to make inferences from the data. The study found that improper driving behavior is the primary cause of accidents at signalized urban intersections in Riyadh; running a red light and failing to yield are the primary contributing causes. The analysis indicates that there is an urgent need to review existing intersection geometry along with the traffic control devices installed at these sites. In addition, public education campaigns and law enforcement strategies are urgently needed.     

Aviation occupant survival factors: An empirical study of the SQ006 accident

We present an empirical study of Singapore Airline (SIA) flight SQ006 to illustrate the critical factors that influence airplane occupant survivability. The Fuzzy Delphi Method was used to identify and rank the survival factors that may reduce injury and fatality in potentially survivable accidents. This is the first attempt by a group from both the public and private sectors in Taiwan to focus on cabin-safety issues related to survival factors. We designed a comprehensive survey based on our discussions with aviation safety experts. We next designed an array of important cabin-safety dimensions and then investigated and selected the critical survival factors for each dimension.Our findings reveal important cabin safety and survivability information that should provide a valuable reference for developing and evaluating aviation safety programs. We also believe that the results will be practical for designing cabin-safety education material for air travelers. Finally, the major contribution of this research is that it has identified 47 critical factors that influence accident survivability; therefore, it may encourage improvements that will promote more successful cabin-safety management.     

Technological stigmatism, risk perception, and truth

Technological stigmas can be a source of confusion and misunderstandings of the effect on public health and safety of technological activities. The result can be a gross waste of national resources to fix the ‘stigma’ rather than the real problem. Fueling technological stigmas has become a visible activity, especially among non-technical professionals. Further, it is not clear that these same critics are accountable for their influence on policy and practices that may adversely affect people's lives and financial resources. Their bad news of alleged high risk and incompetent technologists is more appealing to the press than the more technical and apparently boring news of finding engineering solutions to real problems.The issue of technological stigma is especially visible in relation to the environmental and safety effects of the nuclear and chemical industries. These industries are in an extremely defensive position because the stigmatizes put much more emphasis on their risks than on their benefits to society. There is the genuine threat of the denial of important technologies in the nuclear and chemical fields and a resulting loss of lives and resources. The actions required to better tell the whole cost-risk-benefit story of specific technologies have to come from all of the groups involved. The critics and stigmatizers need to be more accountable for their assertions, the technologists need to involve the public more in their consideration of technological solutions to environmental and safety issues, and the press needs to present all of the facts rather than just the sensational or ‘outrage’ part of the story.