23 replies to this topic

[Brigante]

So every morning when I walk into work the first thing I see is a big LED sign with 'Days since last accident' on it, and the counter goes up day by day, I believe it's currently in the 260 days region.

However..

In my first few months alone there has been several 'near misses' in various parts of the plant including;

Bloke driving a hybrid off the line, for some reason gets out the car to check something, leaving it in gear (not 100% on this as I'm not up on my hybrids but anyway..) he then gets back in the car, it for some reason shoots off at speeds and smashes full brunt head on into a wall, writing the car off before it's even left the plant.

Bloke places a box of bolts on a dolly of some sort but knocks it over so they all go on the floor, he bends down to pick them up forgetting there is a robot dolly thing on the track he is on traveling towards him, it crushes him causing him some injury.

Bloke using a Japanese scraper to scrape some sort of glue off a board, he's not wearing the appropriate gloves, he slips and the scraping goes though his gloves cutting his hand open resulting in weeks off work while his hand heals.

Bloke driving a car off the line and it some how breaks down, another bloke comes to help him push it, don't know how they managed it but in short they some how pushed the car down a 5 foot hole.

And the near miss that caused the most disruption, some how the whole plastics department managed to catch on fire and quickly turned out of control requiring the fire engines to be called out after team members emptied about 4 fire extinguishers and they didn't even touch it.


There's actually a few more examples that have happened but I can't think of them right now.

All these are classed as 'near misses'

My question is how bad does something have to be to be classed as an 'accident'?

Random topic to have a talk about and just wondered if anyone else knows of any 'near misses' at they're place of work.

[JennyUK]

I actually thought this was about working closer to your wife/gf haha!

I think any sort of injury in work is out down to accident these days! Even more so when people think they can claim compensation for it!

People should toughen up. Getting impaled on a spike, yes! Cutting your finger on scissors, oh please.

I've had a fair few accidents in work but I just deal with it and get on!

[Brigante]

Lol Jen I meant that the things I listed wasn't even classed as an accident, they was classed as a 'near miss', even a large part of the factory burning down was classed as a 'near miss'

My question is how serious does something actually have to be, to be counted as a full blown accident? A bloke completely cut his hand open which required stitching it back together, yet that was a near miss. Whats an accident, cutting his whole arm off? No doubt that would be a near miss too

[Preee]

In my company they would have been as follows , the cut hand is an Accident and if he was off work for more than 5 consecutive days would have been a R.I.D.O.R reportable accident.

The Crush injury would have been an accident

The fire would be classed as a Near Miss although we are not allowed to fight the fire's , Employee safety is paramount.

The 5 foot drop would have been a near miss.

All four would have too have a full investigation and not closed until the investigation was complete.Findings would be reported through out our company.

We are currently setting up a ThinkSafe corner at work where all employee's are taken through accidents though out our Factories all over the world , the accidents are mocked up on 3d video. This is a great way to make people think before they do something.

Lastly your factory will sooner or later be faced with the rath of H/S exec's if they carry on hiding . The best prevention is to be open and honest and try and push safety at work.

So your correct to be concerned.

[Preee]

Just for your information Charlie

take a look at what they should report by Law.

http://www.hse.gov.u...st-i-report.htm

[Stoney871]

You do know that anyone can report something to RIDDOR or HSE.

[DaveD]

In my third year as an apprentice engineer (1965) a Pakistani painter fell into the Lister green paint bath/dip. He was covered from head to toe in light green agricultural paint. They walked him up the road to the hospital with a one gallon tin of paint thinners. For the next twelve months his footprints were still visible on the pavement to the Hospital. Health and safety wernt invented in those days. He made a full recovery and bought a MK1 Lotus Cortina a few months later. Cant remember his name but he had a good laugh about it.

[Preee]

Jenny
Also in my company a small cut is classed as an accident and investigated , that way we may be able to reduce the chance of it happening again.

Blame all the claim adverts on TV but the claim culture inside a work place now is second earnings to some people now.

By doing a proper investigation , companies can take charge of repeat !! offenders.

For me cut finger or loss of a finger, i want to go home the same way as i arrived to work and my company are doing a great job.
Along with me of course who has to carry out the investigations

[Brigante]

Pree what about the car shooting off into the wall at speed and writing it off? If someone would have been standing infront of the wall no doubt they could have been killed. And the bloke who cut hand, wad deep enough to require stitching and about 2weeks off if i heard correctly.

Just find it funny how every day i walk in and the counter is still counting up the days since the last accident, then next thing the teamleader is telling us about the days near misses.. Wonder what the last accident actually was 260 odd days ago.

By the way the company in question is one of the biggest and well known leading car manufacturers..

[Preee]

The car hitting the wall i would imagine should have been reportable as with the large fire you had, and they should at least of reported it to Headquarters , i have an idea which car company your talking about.

Management there are not doing themselves any favours. It's all about prevention , and you can't prevent anything you hide.

It's your right as an employee to challenge anything under the Health and safety in your place of work.

I would say they are keeping their Accident rate away form Headquarters as it would be one of the company focus points, on yearly analysis.

*EDIT* Senior management team would be fired in my company if they did the same.

[Brigante]

Give you a hint, they are japanese

[Stoney871]

Toyota?

[Preee]

Don't give out the name of the company there are always watch full eyes.

[Brigante]

Don't give out the name of the company there are always watch full eyes.

Weren't going to mate. There are several big japanese car manufacturers out there

[jeebowhite]

Well being a first aider at my place, anything that results in an injury (down to paper cuts) is classed as an incident, and needs to be written up. In your environment, you would have the "first aid" side of the coin, and also the "product loss" side, which can be any ding in the door, to the full blown head first crash into a wall!