Accidents not just happen, they can be prevented.

Industrial Safety is a top priority since it saves human lives and avoids physical damage, however it is an outstanding and daily challenge for basically all industries, there is plenty research on the subject that helps us understand how we can increase prevention effectiveness. As a start, and like Peter Drucker said “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” And the vast majority of companies do measure incidents, accidents and prevention measures.

As for the costs of an Industrial Accident, the National Safety Council estimates average Work Injury Costs for medically consulted injuries by $42,000 while cost per death is estimated at $1.2M, and these are only immediate and economical costs.

No alt text provided for this image

The most dangerous industries Construction, Steel Manufacturing and Manufacturing and this is related to the Primary Cause of Accident that is Machine involvement. Researchers from the European Journal of Scientific Research concluded that the principal Secondary Causal Factors of Accidents are

  • Lack of Adequate Knowledge
  • Operator’s Negligence

and can be prevented if there is a system in place that can

  1. measure safety performance,
  2. implement intervention strategies,
  3. analyze and identify patterns that predict an accident,
  4. implement specific training that is focused on identified areas of opportunity,

So instead of relying on data for improvement only after an accident has occured it is no possible to use every single analyzed movement and use it to monitor and improve safety performance.

Research estimates that about 22.4% of Operator Negligence is because operators don’t use Personal Protective Equipment. The following video shows how AI identifies if PPE is being used and can help you reduce Operator Negligence.

This sounds like an ideal world taken out of a story from the future, however the future has come upon us and Artificial Intelligence advanced techniques enable this prevention system. Can we set up safer workplaces? If an accident can be predicted on 46% of the cases, why are we relying more on traditional measurements of safety performance that are based on some form of accident or injury data?

Please let me know what you think.

Braingine The Machine Vision Company

If you want to learn more visit us at Braingine, The Machine Vision Company®.