Common Accident Investigation Errors
![Trevor Kletz](/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image.png)
Trever Kletz – Common Accident Investigation Errors
Trevor Kletz, Professor at Loughborough University, prolific author, and safety guru from the UK, recently published an article titled: “Some Common Errors in Accident Investigations” in the Safety and Reliability Society Journal.
Four of the eight common errors he listed are:
- They quote human error as the cause.
- They blame individuals though many people have opportunities to prevent most accidents.
- They do not realize that [corrective] actions are the most important part of a report.
- The worst error: they think of a possible cause and then look for evidence that supports it.
Why do I bring up this article and these four errors here?
First, I think that investigators could learn a lot from Trevor’s insights.
Second, the TapRooT® System was developed to help prevent these four errors (and help with some of the ones not listed above). Here’s how…
- The TapRooT® Root Cause Tree® was developed to lead investigators past the common cause of human error to the real, fixable causes of human error.
- The TapRooT® SnapCharT® Diagram helps people see that not just one person is to blame for an accident. It’s remarkable to see the focus of the investigation change from blame to understanding.
- The TapRooT® Corrective Action Helper® Guide emphasizes developing effective corrective actions, which the TapRooT® Software automatically includes in the investigation report.
- The TapRooT® System avoids the common cause-and-effect related error of jumping to conclusions by trying to prove a cause. Instead, TapRooT® RCA starts by understanding what happened before defining causal factors and then determining their root causes using the guidance in the Root Cause Tree® Diagram and Dictionary.
By design, the TapRooT® RCA System helps beat common accident investigation errors.
Time to Try TapRooT® RCA
Isn’t it time you tried TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis?
See all the TapRooT® Courses that you can learn from at THIS LINK.
And see the upcoming public TapRooT® Course dates and locations at THIS LINK.
__________
Note that Trevor died about two years after we posted this article. Soon after writing this article in 2011, we tried to get him to be a keynote speaker at the Global TapRooT® Summit, but he told me that his health wasn’t good enough for overseas flights. We will miss him and his profound advice.