Safety Violations Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF SUPERVISOR–WORKER RELATIONSHIP ON WORKERS’ SAFETY VIOLATIONS: A MODIFIED THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOUR

This study develops and tests an integrative model to better understand the mechanisms by which the leadermember exchange (LMX) determines workers’ safety behaviours. The modified theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was proposed by using attitudinal ambivalence to replace univalent safety attitude. Empirical data were collected from 229 construction workers in China using a detailed questionnaire. Both situational and routine safety violations were considered in this model. The results showed that LMX had significant effects on both types of safety violations through three mediators from the modified TPB framework. Specifically, attitudinal ambivalence and group safety norm mediated the relationships between LMX and both types workers’ safety violations. However, perceived behavioural control only mediated the relationship between LMX and individuals’ routine safety violations. Furthermore, this research supported the distinctions between situational and routine safety violations. The indirect effects of LMX on individuals’ situational safety violations took place mainly through group safety norm. By contrast, the indirect effects on individuals’ routine safety violations took place mainly through attitudinal ambivalence and perceived behavioural control. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications, research limitations, and future directions were discussed. The results provide some meaningful insights into how to improve safety compliance behaviours from the perspective of supervisor-worker relationships.

Safety First is Safety Always – Opportunities and Challenges on Safety Management of Hazardous Employments in India

Organization should provide a safe and healthy environment for its employees. Safety is concerned with the protection of the physical health of employees in the workplace. The Health and Safety Policies aims to create a healthy workplace by reducing hazards affecting the performance of employees. Hazardous working conditions will increase the health risks leading to high rate of absenteeism and attrition. Any unexpected event likely to cause any type of injury to the person or damage to the property and environment is called to be the accident. Frequent exposure of the worker to the unhealthy working conditions slowly develops accumulated effect over an extended period of time causing occupational diseases. All the accidents involving the element of fatality or injury which disables a person from working for more than 48 hours are considered to be the reportable injuries. Occupational hazards are the potential conditions both internal and external transforming into a series of events causing loss. Death, injuries and illness can arise out of safety violations or negligence. Accidents and Injuries happening in the course of employment will cause enormous financial loss to the organization. Safety is the protection against uncertain risks caused by the hazards of electricity, machinery, slip or trip, explosion causing injury, death or damage to people and property. This study aims to describe the fundamentals of industrial safety management for hazardous industries in India.

Cost-effective technology of temporary setting trains aside from the traffic

The article determines main factors of the need for modern conditions of temporary setting aside trains from the traffic, which require consideration of this operation not as an emergency forced measure, the need for which arises because of operational personnel errors, but as one of the elements of the transportation process technology that require it rational organization. These factors are: formation of large unloading areas in seaports taking into account recurring difficulties in its work, technical equipment failures and traffic safety violations, daily irregularity of train operation, etc. Principles of building a rational strategy for temporary setting aside trains from traffic are considered. It makes provision for: using the capabilities of the operational area infrastructure as a whole for set aside trains, impermissibility of reducing the carrying capacity of previous sections of the difficult section below its carrying capacity as a result of set aside trains, selecting stations for set aside trains based on feasibility studies.Use of a cost-effective strategy for the temporary setting trains from traffic in the event of operational difficulties will minimize the expenses of the JSC “Russian Railways” related to the need to carry out this element of the transportation process technology.

재해사례를 기반으로 한 사고유형별 산업안전보건법의 실태조사 : 사례조사 연구

Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate the types of accidents on the basis of industrial accidents cases, to identify the cause of each type of accidents, and then to understand the occupational safety and health act related to the causes. BR Background: Improving and advancing the effectiveness of the occupational safety and health act is the most fundamental improvement activity for industrial accident prevention. In order to enhance the effectiveness of the occupational safety and health act, it is necessary to clearly investigate the current status and characteristics of industrial accidents in Korea and to reflect them.BR Method: This study was conducted based on the cases of domestic industrial accidents provided by the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Examples of industrial accidents were randomly selected from accidents cases occurring in 2010-2016 in machinery, electricity, chemicals, and construction.BR Results: Fall accidents accounted for about 20.0% of the total accidents, followed by explosion 14.4%, pitting 12.8%, and electric shock 11.3%. The occupational safety and health act, according to the cause, showed the highest proportion of items related to Chapter 4, hazard risk prevention action. Second, safety and health education noncompliance was high (23.5%).BR Conclusion: The purpose of this study is to investigate the occupational safety and health act which is deemed to be highly related to the cause of accident by summarizing the types of accidents, causes of accidents and causal factors. In order to revise and redefine the occupational safety and health act, it is necessary to have a database that can be used to build data on violations of the occupational safety and health act.BR Application: The results of this study can be utilized as a methodology for the revision of the occupational safety and health act.

Dichotomy in ethical perceptions of business students: an emerging country perspective

PurposeThe Corruption Perception Index (CPI) for 2016 shows Pakistan as among the more corrupt nations in the world with a ranking of 117 among 176 countries surveyed. This situation raises concerns about members of the society and especially about the business communities. This paper aims to examine whether the tendency to corruption is also prevalent amongst business students, the future leaders and executives of business organizations.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses survey questionnaires in the manner of Parsa and Lankford (1999) to examine the ethical levels of business students. It uses Levene’s (1960) tests for equality of variances and the t-test for equality of means to examine whether there are difference in the ethical perceptions between: bachelors (BBA) and graduate (MBA) students; business students who have taken the ethics course and those who have not; and female and male students. The authors also examine the overall ethical perceptions of business students.FindingsThe results show that students seem to make a clear distinction in respect of what they consider as acceptable and unacceptable ethical behavior. They would not indulge in behavior that directly falls within the category of stealing, misusing of company’s resources and undertaking actions that are wrong or dishonest, which may stem from their religious indoctrination. However, they would consider as acceptable behavior the overlooking of safety violations, not telling on peers; and fudging of the truth to get the job done. The latter attitude appears to be in line with business objectives of achieving targets irrespective of the means employed and that inform business education. We do not find any differences between the behavior of women and men which may be the outcome of the same religious indoctrination and educational perceptions. While there is a difference in the ethical perceptions between students who have taken the ethics course and those who have not, the course is not able to counter the lack of ethics among business students. There is a need for some stronger measures to inculcate a set of ethical values within students. However, we did find that some of the unethical behavior is diluted at the MBA level in comparison to BBA students.Originality/valueThis study provides new insights into the ethical perceptions of students in an Islamic emerging country. There is a conflict between ethics conveyed through Islamic precepts, and the ethics of business education with a focus on profits/revenues, costs, performance and competition that endorses a Machiavellian attitude of achieving goals at any cost and the love of money (Tang and Chen, 2008). It is the first study to suggest a differentiation in the ethical behavior of business students that exhibit both ethical and unethical behavior. There appears to be a clear segregation between what students deem as acceptable and unacceptable ethical behavior that may result from their personal/religious beliefs, and their business attitudes that strongly informs their ethical behavior. It provides a basis for developing more customized and effective ethics courses in Pakistan and suggests more importantly that ethics needs to be integrated into business concepts imparted in business programs at universities.

Drawbacks of the bill project about supplementing article 286 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine with the norm of exemption from criminal liability and the risks of its adoption

The article analyzes the quality of the bill number 10236 dated April 17, 2019, filed by the People's Deputy of Ukraine I. O. Lapin, which proposes to amend the Article 286 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine as regards liability for violations of traffic safety rules.The attention is focused on a number of shortcomings and criminal-law risks that this bill contains. Such drawbacks are:1. The logical inconsistency of the considerations of the initiators of the bill, which, criticizing the legal uncertainty of the norms of the Road Traffic Rules of Ukraine, suggest that amendments be made not to the relevant points of the Rules, but to the Criminal Code of Ukraine.2. Failure to comply with the logical structure of the norms for exemption from criminal liability – exemption is not made dependent on the positive post-criminal behavior of the perpetrator.3. Ignoring the theoretical developments of the criminal law doctrine, according to which the conse- quences of a traffic accident may be causally related to violations of traffic safety rules imposed by several participants in traffic.4. Instead of reducing the amount of criminal liability (mitigation of responsibility) of a road accident participant who participated in the process of causing the consequences together with the others, it is unreasonable to propose complete and unconditional exemption from criminal liability.In addition to the above, the bill contains the risks of unjustified avoidance of criminal responsibility by persons who, along with other traffic participants, violated the rules of road safety and allowed the onset of traffic accidents.The research, carried out in this article, updates the problems of the quality of scientific support of the lawmaking process and the problem of criminal legal risks in law-making and law-enforcement activities, which have already been set in the domestic theory of criminal law.

Innovation Safety Management by Shaping the Law on Non-Practising Entities (Patent Trolls) in the USA and EU

Abstract In a knowledge-based economy, innovation resulting from R & D activities and subsequent management of their legal safety are of particular importance. Incorrect patent law can lead to abuse in the area of innovation security on a large scale through the activities of the NPE organization (patent trolls). This phenomenon is particularly noticeable in the US while in the EU it is at a negligible level. The aim of the article is to demonstrate and prove by using comparative literature and documents analysis of US and EU, that inappropriate law leads to violations of innovation safety through the unhampered activity of patent trolls, while a change of the law to more restrictive law is a right step to reduce the patent trolling. On the other hand, the author proves that in an area with a less liberal definition of patentability, there are no many violations of innovation safety through patent trolling.

Fuel cladding damage assessment based on reactivity insertion accidents for a 10 MWth LBE cooled fast reactor

Fuel cladding integrity affects the safety and economy of nuclear reactors, especially in accident condition. In this paper, based on the reactivity insertion accident (RIA) analysis, the fuel cladding damage has been analyzed for a 10 MWth LBE cooled fast reactor developed by Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety and Technology (INEST) using RELAP5. Simulation was carried out for control rod withdrawal accident with a reactivity insertion rate of 50.19 pcm/s for 4 s, both for scram and without scram. During the control rod withdrawal accident without scram, the highest cladding temperature was 714 °C, which was below the temperature limit of cladding integrity. It is concluded that the RIA will not cause reactor safety violation due to the reactor’s inherent safety feature.

ANALISIS TANGGUNG JAWAB PELAKU USAHA PT. JASA MARGA TERHADAP PELANGGARAN HAK KESELAMATAN KONSUMEN PENGGUNA JALAN TOL DITINJAU DARI PERATURAN PEMERINTAH NOMOR 15 TAHUN 2005 TENTANG JALAN TOL.

Roads are one of the most important transportation infrastructures in people's lives and have an important role in the efforts to develop the life of the nation and state, especially the construction of toll roads that are safe and comfortable for journeys. But along with the development of the era, resulting in many problems that occur related to toll road safety, so the question arises: How is legal protection for consumers of toll road users in the right to safety on the highway? And How the Responsibilities of Business Actors PT. Jasa Marga regarding violations of consumer safety of toll road users in terms of Government Regulation Number 15 of 2005 concerning toll roads? As normative legal protection road users a toll had been arranged in several regulations which includes government regulation number 15 of 2005 and completed explicitly by law number 8 of 1999 on consumer protection. But what envisaged in the regulation in protecting and responsibility of have been given by PT. Jasa Marga not fully been implemented especially consumers road users toll in the soles safety on the highway

Exploring C semantics and pointer provenance

The semantics of pointers and memory objects in C has been a vexed question for many years. C values cannot be treated as either purely abstract or purely concrete entities: the language exposes their representations, but compiler optimisations rely on analyses that reason about provenance and initialisation status, not just runtime representations. The ISO WG14 standard leaves much of this unclear, and in some respects differs with de facto standard usage --- which itself is difficult to investigate. In this paper we explore the possible source-language semantics for memory objects and pointers, in ISO C and in C as it is used and implemented in practice, focussing especially on pointer provenance. We aim to, as far as possible, reconcile the ISO C standard, mainstream compiler behaviour, and the semantics relied on by the corpus of existing C code. We present two coherent proposals, tracking provenance via integers and not; both address many design questions. We highlight some pros and cons and open questions, and illustrate the discussion with a library of test cases. We make our semantics executable as a test oracle, integrating it with the Cerberus semantics for much of the rest of C, which we have made substantially more complete and robust, and equipped with a web-interface GUI. This allows us to experimentally assess our proposals on those test cases. To assess their viability with respect to larger bodies of C code, we analyse the changes required and the resulting behaviour for a port of FreeBSD to CHERI, a research architecture supporting hardware capabilities, which (roughly speaking) traps on the memory safety violations which our proposals deem undefined behaviour. We also develop a new runtime instrumentation tool to detect possible provenance violations in normal C code, and apply it to some of the SPEC benchmarks. We compare our proposal with a source-language variant of the twin-allocation LLVM semantics proposal of Lee et al. Finally, we describe ongoing interactions with WG14, exploring how our proposals could be incorporated into the ISO standard.

Barrier-Certified Adaptive Reinforcement Learning With Applications to Brushbot Navigation

This paper presents a safe learning framework that employs an adaptive model learning algorithm together with barrier certificates for systems with possibly nonstationary agent dynamics. To extract the dynamic structure of the model, we use a sparse optimization technique. We use the learned model in combination with control barrier certificates which constrain policies (feedback controllers) in order to maintain safety, which refers to avoiding particular undesirable regions of the state space. Under certain conditions, recovery of safety in the sense of Lyapunov stability after violations of safety due to the nonstationarity is guaranteed. In addition, we reformulate an action-value function approximation to make any kernel-based nonlinear function estimation method applicable to our adaptive learning framework. Lastly, solutions to the barrier-certified policy optimization are guaranteed to be globally optimal, ensuring the greedy policy improvement under mild conditions. The resulting framework is validated via simulations of a quadrotor, which has previously been used under stationarity assumptions in the safe learnings literature, and is then tested on a real robot, the brushbot, whose dynamics is unknown, highly complex and nonstationary.

Understanding the Social Contagion Effect of Safety Violations within a Construction Crew: A Hybrid Approach Using System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modeling.

Previous research has recognized the importance of eliminating safety violations in the context of a social group. However, the social contagion effect of safety violations within a construction crew has not been sufficiently understood. To address this deficiency, this research aims to develop a hybrid simulation approach to look into the cognitive, social, and organizational aspects that can determine the social contagion effect of safety violations within a construction crew. The hybrid approach integrates System Dynamics (SD) and Agent-based Modeling (ABM) to better represent the real world. Our findings show that different interventions should be employed for different work environments. Specifically, social interactions play a critical role at the modest hazard levels because workers in this situation may encounter more ambiguity or uncertainty. Interventions related to decreasing the contagion probability and the safety–productivity tradeoff should be given priority. For the low hazard situation, highly intensive management strategies are required before the occurrence of injuries or accidents. In contrast, for the high hazard situation, highly intensive proactive safety strategies should be supplemented by other interventions (e.g., a high safety goal) to further control safety violations. Therefore, this research provides a practical framework to examine how specific accident prevention measures, which interact with workers or environmental characteristics (i.e., the hazard level), can influence the social contagion effect of safety violations.

How does open government data driven co-creation occur? Six factors and a ‘perfect storm’; insights from Chicago's food inspection forecasting model

It is becoming increasingly clear that the concepts of open government data (OGD) and co-creation are related; however, there is currently only limited empirical material available exploring the link between the two. This paper aims to help clarify the relationship between these two concepts by exploring a recently coined phenomenon: OGD-driven co-created public services. These services 1) utilize or are driven by OGD; 2) are co-created by stakeholders from different groups; and 3) produce public value for society. Due to the relative newness of the phenomenon an inductive exploratory case study is undertaken on Chicago's use of OGD in the co-creation of their food safety inspection forecasting model. This model forecasts critical food safety violations at food serving establishments and sends inspectors to the highest risk establishments first. The results of this exploratory work led to the discovery of a ‘perfect storm’ of six factors that seem to play a key role in allowing OGD-driven public service co-creation to take place. These factors are motivated stakeholders, innovative leaders, proper communication, an existing OGD portal, external funding, and agile development.

Market power and food safety in the China pork industry

AbstractUsing data collected from a pork firm survey, we develop a modeling framework and use the conjectural variation method to examine the effect of market power on the food safety of the pork industry in China. Probit models with a two‐step Heckman selection procedure are applied to identify the determinants of the likelihood and degree of food safety violations. Market power is found to reduce the likelihood of violation but not the degree of violation. Other factors such as traceability systems, adoption of risk control systems and industry standards, and the scale and scope of operations also impact food safety violations. Findings suggest that market power in China’s pork industry provides incentives for firms to mitigate risk and improve food safety. However, firms may continue to have challenges in meeting food safety obligations when moving toward mega‐size and product diversification.

Reviewing the Effects of Integrated Lean Six Sigma Methodologies with Ergonomics Principles in an Industrial Workstation

This work presents the importance of a combination of three approaches: the Lean idea of waste to be eliminated, the Six Sigma concept of variance to be reduced, and Ergonomics approaches that play an important role in maintaining workers’ productivity. Improper workstation layout conditions lead to excessive stress, reduced performance, and physical burdens. This leads to increases in waste indicators such as loss of time, poor space, and low quality levels. A single-minded focus on productivity may neglect health and safety issues and, worse, changes introduced by Lean may lead to additional risks. Muda is a term in Lean referring to any action or process that doesn’t add value within processes, such as physical waste of time or safety violations. Job Rotation as a problem-solving tool refers to the structured interchange of workers between different jobs that are recognised as problem or high-risk jobs. The methodology of this research work proposes an integrated model combining Lean as represented by reducing Muda or waste that does not add value to both process and workers, previewed by means of the DMAIC Six Sigma stages, with job rotation used as an efficient measurement tool to observe jobs that may be identified as overly stressful. A computerised worksheet tool was used to perform a semi-quantitative assessment process for rating a job’s Exertion Index (IE), which can be used to determine the best arrangement of Job Rotation schedules. The work aims were: I) Rearrangement of jobs according to risk level of producing non-well-being to reduce additional psychological stress on workers and to II) reflect this by achieving continuous improvement by eliminating waste, decreasing activities that are Non-Values Add, and thereby creating good quality levels. The findings showed enhancement of current safety and productivity levels from evaluating the Exertion Index and swapping some workstations with unacceptable indices. This offered a reduction in physiological strain, stress, and fatigue on various muscle sets. The case study for this research work was implemented in the General Company for Hydraulic Industries/Damper factory.

Web-Based Health Intervention for Young People Who Have a Parent with a Mental Illness: Delphi Study Among Potential Future Users.

BackgroundYoung people who have a parent with a mental illness face elevated risks to their mental health and well-being. However, they may not have access to appropriate interventions. Web-based interventions may reach and meet the needs of this at-risk group, yet their preferences regarding the features of this medium are unknown.ObjectiveThis study sought to determine the utility of a Web-based intervention to meet the needs of young people who have a parent with a mental illness and their perspectives regarding the types of features of such a website.MethodsA systematic, 2-round Delphi study was employed to solicit the views of 282 young people aged 16 to 21 years (Round 1, n=14; Round 2, n=268) from urban and regional settings in Australia who self-reported that their parent has a mental illness. “Regional” was used to refer to nonurban participants in the study. After ascertaining whether a Web-based intervention was warranted, Web-based intervention features were identified, including how the site might be facilitated, topics, duration and frequency, and the nature of the professional contact. The extent to which young people agreed on the importance of these factors was assessed. Differences and similarities across gender and location were investigated. A mixed method analytic framework was employed using thematic analysis as well as 2-way between-groups analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) controlling for age and chi-square test of independence analysis.ResultsBoth rounds highlighted a strong preference for a Web-based intervention. Consensus was reached for a professionally monitored site, young people and professionals having equal input into the weekly facilitated sessions (eg, sharing the lead role in discussions or deciding on relevant session content), unlimited time access, 1-hour, open discussion, weekly sessions over 6 weeks, psychoeducation about mental illness, and considerations for the management of safety violations. There were significant main effects of location type and several of the preferred features for a Web-based intervention for young people who have a parent with a mental illness. However, effect sizes were small to moderate, limiting practical application.ConclusionsYoung people aged 16 to 21 years indicated a need for a professionally monitored, psychoeducational, Web-based intervention, with input from professional facilitators and other young people who have a parent with a mental illness, in addition to recommendations to external resources. These findings may inform the development of future Web-based interventions for this highly vulnerable group.

Safety-complete test suites

In this paper, a novel safety-related variant of complete test suites for finite state machines is introduced. Under certain hypotheses which are similar to the ones used in the well-known W-Method and its improved versions, the new method guarantees to uncover every violation of safety properties from a certain well-defined class, while erroneous behaviour without safety relevance may remain undetected. While the method can be based on any of the known complete strategies for FSM testing, its most effective variant is based on the H-method, and this variant is presented in detail, denoted as the Safety-complete H-Method. It is guaranteed that application of the Safety-complete H-Method always results in less or equally many test cases than when applying the original H-Method. In well-defined situations that can be pre-determined from the reference model, the Safety-complete H-Method leads to a substantial reduction of test cases in comparison to the size of the analogous H test suites. We advocate this new test suite for situations, where exhaustive testing of the complete system is too expensive. In these cases, strong guarantees with respect to fault coverage should only be given for the errors representing safety violations, while it may be considered as acceptable if less critical errors remain undetected.

Does location matter? Exploring the spatial patterns of food safety in a tourism destination

Location-based studies for tourism destinations have beenconducted from perspectives such as regional geography and systematicgeography. However, despite the importance of location, the impact oflocation on food safety has not yet been studied, even though it might bethe most influential aspect of planning and development in a tourism destination. This exploratory study identified locational determinants that are associated with the degree of critical food safety violations in hotel restaurants in the Miami metropolitan area in the United States. The results indicated that proximity to the beach, downtown, city of Miami, and airport had a significant effect on critical food safety violations. Furthermore, considerable local variations in the relationships among variables were explored using a geographically weighted regression. The implications on and suggestions for effective food safety planning and policy related to tourism are discussed.

Customers' Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices towards Food Hygiene and Safety Standards of Handlers in Food Facilities in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Efforts to prevent foodborne illnesses in food facilities require sufficient knowledge on hygiene and safety standards from both food processors and customers. However, studies about knowledge, attitude, and practices of customers towards these issues are constrained. This study explored the knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) of customers regarding the practices of food facilities as well as potential associated factors. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Hanoi from September to October 2015. Questions about knowledge, attitude, and practice towards food hygiene and safety were asked, alongside sociodemographic characteristics. Multivariate Tobit regression was used to identify the associated factors with the KAP. Among 1740 customers, the highest mean score of 98.4 (SD = 10.1) was found in knowledge about practices with raw and cooked food, following by knowledge about environmental practices when processing food (mean = 93.1, SD = 17.3), and knowledge about environmental requirements when processing food (mean = 33.3, SD = 33.3). Most of customers considered the processing and selling of hygienic meals without leaving any food overnight as the most important feature for food facilities (73.8%). About 63.2% of participants chose not to report food safety violation by facilities to authorities. The higher score of knowledge was found in groups of people who were not single, had college/university or higher education, and had specific criteria when choosing their places to eat. These findings imply the need for enhancing customers’ protection systems, the capability of inspecting and supervising the food processing progress by local authorities, and the awareness of customers about the environmental requirements of food facilities.

Traffic Violations: A Study of Measures Aimed at Bringing Perpetrators to Justice

The article is devoted to a study of administrative and legal enforcement actions against violators of road safety (RS) laws used in the Republic of Kazakhstan and some foreign countries. The aim of the present article is to analyze ways of bringing to justice the perpetrators of traffic offences in the national legislation of Kazakhstan and some foreign countries, to assess their effectiveness and the possibility of using foreign experience in the national legal field. The article examines the foreign organizational and legal experience in the application of administrative responsibility for violators of RS laws and the administrative regulations of Kazakhstan; the conclusions have been made, and the recommendations for further improvement of measures to bring to justice violators of RS laws have been given. The author subjects the use of the fine as the main mechanism for bringing to justice perpetrators of the traffic violations to fair criticism. Based on the study of normative materials on administrative law and the experience of foreign countries in counteraction to RS violations, the author suggests ways to eliminate causes and conditions for committing traffic safety violations and formulates the proposals for further improvement of the administrative legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in particular, excluding the prevarication when using the data of photo and video fixation of traffic offences. The main provisions and conclusions of the article can be used in scientific and practical activities in addressing the issues of law violation prevention, the comparative characteristics of the norms of responsibility for RS violations of Kazakhstan and foreign countries laws, and in the subsequent reform of statutory regulations on administrative offences.