Accident; analysis and prevention
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Comparative Study
Safety climate and self-reported injury: assessing the mediating role of employee safety control.
To further reduce injuries in the workplace, companies have begun focusing on organizational factors which may contribute to workplace safety. Safety climate is an organizational factor commonly cited as a predictor of injury occurrence. Characterized by the shared perceptions of employees, safety climate can be viewed as a snapshot of the prevailing state of safety in the organization at a discrete point in time. ⋯ Factorial evidence substantiated that management commitment to safety, return-to-work policies, post-injury administration, and safety training are important dimensions of safety climate. In addition, the data support that safety climate is a critical factor predicting the history of a self-reported occupational injury, and that employee safety control mediates the relationship between safety climate and occupational injury. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating organizational factors and workers' characteristics in efforts to improve organizational safety performance.
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Several studies have shown that risky driving is especially prevalent among young drivers and recent research has pointed out that driving in adolescence should be investigated in the more general context of adolescent development. The first aim of this contribution was to analyze involvement in risky driving in a normative sample of 645 Italian adolescents, boys and girls, aged 14-17, through a self-report questionnaire. A second aim was to evaluate the association between risky driving and lifestyle, defined as involvement in other health risk behaviors and leisure activities. ⋯ Results concerning the association between risky driving and lifestyle showed that risky driving was not an isolated behavior. Boys who displayed risky driving practices were more likely to adopt a lifestyle characterized by high involvement in antisocial behaviors, tobacco smoking, comfort eating and time spent in non-organized activities with friends. Girls involved in risky driving were more likely to be involved in other risk-taking behaviors, antisocial behaviors and drug use.
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Previous studies have suggested that strong safety climates (shared perceptions of safe conducts at work) are associated with lower workplace-injury rates, but they rarely control for differences in industry hazards. Based on 33 companies, we assessed its association with injury rates using three rate based injury measures (claims per 100 employees, claims per 100,000 h worked, and claims per 1 million US dollars payroll), which were derived from workers' compensation injury claims. Linear regression models were used to test the predictability of safety climate on injury rates, followed by controlling for differences in hazard across industries gauged by national industry-specific injury rates. ⋯ However, all of the above associations were no longer apparent when controlling for the hazardousness of the specific industry. These findings may be due to over adjustment of hazard risk, or the overwhelming effects of industry specific hazards relative to safety climate effects that could not be differentiated with the statistical power in our study. Industry differences in hazard, conceptualized as one type of injury risk, however need to be considered when testing the association between safety climate and injury across different industries.
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A population-based study was carried out in 1996-2001 to provide the incidence and to identify the risk factors of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) resulting from a road accident. The severe TBI was defined as an injury to the brain or the skull, excluding scalp injuries, with an abbreviated injury scale (AIS) severity score greater than 2. The severe TBI of 1238 patients were described. ⋯ Even after adjustment for several severity factors, male gender and age above 55 were both risk factors. Prevention programs aiming at improving the head protection should be promoted. The circumstances of the accident should be taken into account to predict a severe TBI.
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There is evidence that excessive speed leads to an increased frequency and severity of road traffic accidents, but it is not clear how speeds may be reduced. To increase understanding of why drivers exceed the speed limits, the views of a sample of road users who had been prosecuted for exceeding the speed limit in the rural county of Norfolk England were sought. Respondents were categorised into a four group driver typology comprising conformers (those who report they never exceed limits) deterred drivers (those put off speeding by the presence of cameras), manipulators (those who slow only at camera locations) and defiers (those who exceed limits regardless of cameras), and the consistency of opinions was compared between the groups. ⋯ Manipulators often acknowledged that their style of driving was dangerous; however, they failed to link this to their own behaviour. It was evident that many defiers and manipulators did not perceive speeding as a serious traffic law violation. Possible implications for road safety initiatives are discussed and recommendations are given for specifically targeting different driver types.