In France, one-third of occupational accidents with sick leave are caused by slips, trips, or other movement disturbances. INRS has conducted a multi-disciplinary study for the purpose of better understanding the factors lying at the cause of such accidents, such as involvement in a mental task and work organisation. That work was done both in the laboratory and out in the field, in partnership with experts.
In particular, one hundred and forty-three accounts of particularly serious accidents with movement disturbance in the construction and civil engineering and metallurgy sectors were analysed and modelled. That approach made it possible to highlight the following recurrent scenarios* in terms of generic accident factors:
• An element, which is a product of activities other than that performed by the victim, impedes his activity and disturbs his displacement
• Following a technical incident, movement of an operator manipulating a tool is disturbed, the tool thereby causing injury
• A worker, handling or manipulating an object/tool, exerts an effort or forces against an element which resists when his movement is disturbed
• An operator is burned by a corrosive liquid after his movement was disturbed when handling an object
The results of that work aim to raise awareness among OSH specialists of the diversity and of the complexity of accidents with movement disturbance. They should enable progress to be made in the way these risks are perceived, such risks still too often being considered as mundane and minor, and should thus contribute to developing and implementing specific prevention strategies.
* 8 scenarios in total. For more information: Extracting recurrent scenarios from narrative texts using a Bayesian network: Application to serious occupational accidents with movement disturbance, Accid Anal Prev. 2014 Sep; 70:155-66. : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24769246
Contact: sylvie.leclercq@inrs.
