Psychological Aspects of Industrial Safety

Accidents are unexpected events of afflctive or unfortunate character which frequently result in injury to a human being. Implicit in the defnition is the idea that accidents are chance events. But safety specialists do not believe this. They say that accidents are caused; they do not just happen. Industrial accidents involve people, their unsafe acts and machine and other hazards. Most preventable accidents occur because of some individual's unsafe act, or a hazard or both. Of the two factors, the individual is more important in contributing to accidents. 88% of accidents are due to human failures. All elements of an individual, physical as well as mental, contribute their share to his every act, right or wrong. As such it is necessary for us to examine and understand the unsafe behaviour in the light of psychology so that attempts could be made to correct it.