CMSP Accident Investigation & Analysis Flashcards

According to Heinrich's Industrial Accident Prevention Triangle, for every one major injury there are approximately how many minor injuries?

Answer: 29

Heinrich's Triangle proposes a ratio of 1 major injury to 29 minor injuries to 300 no-injury incidents, highlighting the base of unsafe behaviors.

James Reason's 'Swiss Cheese Model' of accident causation illustrates:

Answer: How holes in multiple defensive barriers can align to allow accidents to occur

Reason's model shows that accidents occur when gaps in multiple independent defensive layers simultaneously align, allowing a hazard to reach a vulnerable target.

'Immediate causes' of accidents are commonly classified as:

Answer: Unsafe acts and unsafe conditions

Immediate causes are the direct precursors visible at the time of an accident, categorized as unsafe acts by people or unsafe conditions in the environment.

In accident investigation, a 'contributing cause' differs from a 'root cause' in that:

Answer: Contributing causes increase accident likelihood but alone would not have caused the event

Contributing causes are enabling factors that increase the probability of an accident but are insufficient by themselves to cause it without the presence of the root cause.

The primary purpose of developing 'corrective actions' following a root cause analysis is to:

Answer: Prevent recurrence by directly addressing identified root and contributing causes

Corrective actions address the identified causes of an accident to eliminate or control the conditions that allowed it to occur, preventing recurrence.

The 'iceberg model' in accident cost analysis refers to the concept that:

Answer: Visible direct costs are small compared to the much larger hidden indirect costs

Like an iceberg, direct accident costs (medical bills, compensation) are visible above the surface, while indirect costs (lost productivity, investigation time, retraining) are far larger but hidden.