Work-related fatalities unsafe design

This study examined 523 worker fatalities for which there was sufficient information on the circumstances to make a judgement on the contribution of unsafe design to the incident.

Of these, 63 fatalities (12%) were determined to have been either definitely caused by unsafe design or design-related factors clearly contributed to the fatality.

A further 125 fatalities (24%) were considered possibly design-related: these included incidents where the circumstances suggested that unsafe design played a role or were incidents that might have been prevented had existing safety technology been used.

The report presents further analysis of these design-related fatal incidents on the basis of the circumstance category that best summarised the incident.  Many brief example narratives of the fatal incidents are also included, along with a summary of the evidence that led to the classification.