Accidents and their Prevention

Abstract

A CHADWICK public lecture on “The Causes and Prevention of Human Accidents” was delivered by Dr. C. S. Myers, principal of the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, on March 12. Hitherto accidents in factories and on the road have been too often attributed merely to recklessness and carelessness and to dangerous conditions More than 50 per cent of factory accidents (fatal and non-fatal) are found not to be due to dangerous machinery; and it has been estimated that, however much better machinery be guarded, the present factory accident rate of more than 106,000 per annum is unlikely to be seriously reduced by these measures or by more extensive use of safety-first posters. On the road, in spite of improved signals, car controls, regulated speeds of traffic and better lay-out of roads, 216,000 were injured and more than 7,000 killed in Great Britain through car accidents in 1933. At least 80 per cent of all such fatal accidents are attributable to the ‘human factor’, the study of which in occupational life is the concern of the industrial psychologist. Accidents are not uniformly spread over the population whose actions may give rise to them. In each of two American investigations, it was found that about a half of the total accidents incurred by trams and omnibuses were confined to about a third of their drivers. In England, the scores obtained in selection tests for the motor driver devised by the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, have proved to be so highly correlated with the records of the safe driving of motor drivers on the roads, that one well-known insurance company has recently offered a ten per cent reduction in the annual premium for accident insurance to those who have passed these tests satisfactorily. Selection methods, however, must be supplemented by adequate knowledge, which can be obtained only by systematic training.