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Workplace Near Misses?


Brigante
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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.

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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!

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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 :P

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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.

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

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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.

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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 :)

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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..

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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. :)

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Give you a hint, they are japanese

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

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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 ;)

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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!

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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.

Was it the incredible Hulk?

now everytime he gets mad,

his blood preisure rises and more of the green paint comes out??

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  • 2 months later...

Okay guys I have fell through a roof at my work was up putting s sign onto a stepped part of the roof and walked back and fore fine went to wipe down the sign then boom through the roof that had a rotten patch where I stood I managed to stop myself by placing arms out and caught my self rolled backwards and back down the ladder to go and tell the customer I just made a Kieran size hole in the roof went inside to find I had gone through a light fitting and bulb which thankfully wasn't on but my work seemed to only see the funny side of this (me being a bigger guy) but luckily I wasn't hurt.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My work doesn't have anything just a accident book but to date still nothing added even when I put a screw driver into the skin between my thumb and first finger creating a nice deep puncture wound, I went white after about half hour holding some paper towel on it and I was also running the joint at the same time, got away with just a dressing and no need for tetanus.

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Even a splinter or paper cut should an recorded.

It's there to cover you and in the case of complications or related absence you have a documented occurrence.

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We are not a big company and 9 out of 10 times if you hurt ya self it's our own fault for doing something we shouldn't.

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What the company should be doing is making Standard Operating Procedures and Risk Assessments , to stop any operator making mistakes, or to at least try and stop an operator making errors.the long and short of it is if a bad accident occurs usually the Small company will go to the wall and the Boss will end up with a very large fine or jail.

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All my lads know that if they hurt them selves they will get laughed at and told to be a man and get on with it, most things that happen are grazed knuckles undoing tight bolts.

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Health and safety is everyone's responsibility.

It's stupid to laugh off injuries.

If the HSE finds out that an accident book is not maintained and any activity likely to have a level of risk is not accessed then the company will be prosecuted and fined.

A scratch for you from a tool or machine today if not reported and rectified could be your oppo's hand or eye.

Not worth your job I'd say.

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As Stoney said, you have to be careful. If any accident that is not reported to First Aider's and written into the accident book turns bad (lets say grazed knuckle, becomes infected, patient is given antibiotics which they have an allergic reaction to and suffer something pretty serious as a result), and the company did not log the incident, then a fine is the least of your worries, prosecution is almost a guarantee.

By all means laugh at them after writing it up, but its the superiors who start to get their head bitten by their bosses when they are being bitten by the HSE!!

Even papercuts need to be written up for that very reason! plus, if someone takes a slight cut, and they have an unknown blood condition such as anoemia, and they continue to bleed and suffer the consequences, not only are you looking at a fine, but someone potentially could end up going to prison, if nothing else (worst case scenario from complications) causing death by failure to abide by HSE regulations...

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