Common Accident Investigation Errors

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:

1. They quote human error as the cause.
2. They blame individuals though many people have opportunities to prevent most accidents.
3. They do not realize that [corrective] actions are the most important part of a report.
4. 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…

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. The TapRooT® Corrective Action Helper® Guide emphasizes developing effective corrective actions, which the TapRooT® Software automatically includes in the investigation report.
4. 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.