It is very likely that your safety team has presented you the pyramid of accidents and near misses maybe they even put it on a poster at the entrance of your company. But they probably didn't tell you, and I was also unaware for a long time, about the lies related to this pyramid. Another Beyond Zero is about to start Let me present the pyramid or triangle of accidents and near misses.
It first appeared in Heinrich's work, here in Brazil it is very known as the Bird's pyramid. I'll use his numbers for our conversation today Well, a pyramid, and the idea is that for each 600 near misses or unsafe conditions, hence that the wide base, we have 30 accidents with some material loss, and for those, 10 accidents with injury, and For every ten accidents with serious injuries, One fatality. What is not talked about is how Bird and Heinrich came up with these numbers They were experts in the insurance field, and collected various numbers of insurance claims, when a call was made to the insurance company, for several organizations, and reached the conclusion that one for every 30 claims, where there was a material loss, only 10 involved more serious injuries and one to a fatality.
Okay, how about the 600 in the base and unsafe behaviors? There was no way for Bird and Heinwirch to reach that conclusion, they had no data, had nowhere to get it from. Where did these numbers come from?
These numbers were made up! And this is not really the problem, the proportionality can prove true, maybe you have seen in your company's pyramid that for each serious accident, many other minor accidents occur and certainly we will find several risk conditions, several procedures not being followed. By the way, about procedures take a look at the first video.
The big problem is that there is no causal relationship. The causes that lead to an accident with a fatality, a seriour accident that can change the life of a person, are not the same that lead to less serious accidents, like trips, slips and ankle twists. The relationship between accidents with minor injuries and fatalities has been the subject of several studies.
Here I present one. When the accident rate on the X axis, the horizontal axis is greater, i. e.
more accidents with minor injuries are reported, the fatality rate is smaller. And the correlation is very strong, what this is saying is that the more accidents at the base, the less fatalities we will have. Maybe the pyramid is inverted and the pyramid that we know is a myth!
What this discussion represents in practical terms? It is clear that avoiding minor accidents (twist ankles and slips) is interesting noone likes to go home with a bruise, a bump, a sprained ankle, but don't think that by doing this you are you really protecting the lives of your colleagues. Maybe it's time to review that ruler that you walk around with measuring ladies' high heels or the amount of scolding you give your colleagues for walking around typing.
Another practical result is the amount of time and resource invested in collecting data that don't make sense that won't add value and won't avoid a fatality, at the end of the day will not protect your colleagues. That's it for today, if you found it interesting, you want to ask more, or if you have a different opinion, write a comment, let's keep talking. You can also add me on Linkedin and we'll continue there And remember that you can share this video with your colleagues, with your friends, with your safety team!
That's it, big hug, take care. Don't forget to have fun!
