Incidents v Accidents v Near Misses

Capturing and analyzing all data related to accidents and incidents are how safety programs are most often judged, but it’s only part of the picture.

While tracking all incidents is a critical aspect of managing your safety performance data, tracking near misses can also have a surprisingly big impact on safety performance.  Many safety professionals know that focusing efforts on near misses can result in reducing future incidents.  

Why Smaller Incidents Matter

Near misses and other less serious incidents might not seem like important events to track, but they have a surprisingly big impact.

Non-accident incidents matter.  Consider the Loss Causation Theory that discusses the implications of the cost of an injury and other costs that stem from that accident.  In 1985 Bird & Germaine depicted an iceberg as a way to show the true costs of accidents.  The tip of the iceberg represented $1 in direct medical and illness costs, followed underneath by many other uninsured ledger costs which amounted to another $5 to $50, and under that more uninsured misc. costs of $1 to $3.  In essence for every dollar spent dealing with an injury, there is anywhere from $6 to $53 in unrelated expenses.

Another popular theory developed by Herbert Heinrich in the 1930's used a pyramid to show

how incidents and accidents relate to each other in terms of both frequency and severity.  The relationship depicted in the pyramid reveals that severe accidents and injuries are often the culmination of several less serious incidents.

By taking steps to reduce the number of risky behaviors and near misses, we are also preventing serious injuries. Conversely, employers or safety professionals who dismiss or don't pay attention to near misses can expect the rate of recordable injuries, lost work days, and fatalities to increase.

Many safety professionals today use small cost effective awards to motivate their workers to report near misses.  The award costs are small; the potential savings that come from stopping risky behaviors at the root can be tremendous!

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