Unlike a Western gunfight shoot-out at the corral on television, serious accidents can cause real anguish and suffering so real and vivid that persons involved or nearby bystanders rarely forget. An accident without injury though is more like the bloodless, painless fakery of television “violence”―perhaps without real purpose in the drama, and therefore easy to forget.
In real life there is a danger in brushing off accidents that do not hurt, harm, or damage. When these accidents, or perhaps we should refer to them as near misses, happen we should immediately run the red warning flag up the pole. Because a noninjury accident is like a 104 degree fever―it’s a positive sign or symptom that something is wrong.
Sometimes we misdiagnose or completely fail to diagnose the symptoms of near misses, because luck or blind chance saved us from injury. We may tend to shrug it off and forget the near miss with a casual kind of ignorance. Hopefully everyone agrees that it is not a good practice to rely on luck for effective accident prevention.
One of the best ways to eliminate the likelihood of future close calls is through effective root-cause analysis and effective corrective action taken on near misses. A list of near misses can be almost endless…. There was a study done many years ago that found for every serious or disabling injury reported, there were about 10 injuries of a less serious nature, 30 property damage incidents, and about 600 incidents (near misses) with no visible injury or property damage. This study was part of the foundation for the widely accepted accident-prevention theory that “increased frequency leads to severity.”
How can you help? Each and every near-miss incident should be documented and discussed, even with the entire team to serve as a lesson. By making everyone aware, everyone becomes more mindful while driving to the job and while working on the job. Everyone must play a part in workplace safety.