• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.52-56
• /
• 2011

Objectives: The occupational accident rate was officially reported to be 0.77 per 100 workers in 2001 and 0.70 in 2009. The stagnant decrease in accident rate raises a question about the effectiveness of prevention activity because there have been active prevention efforts in the past 10 years. It is also necessary to know the exact status of occupational injuries to direct a prevention strategy. Methods: The author re-analyzed occupational injury statistics to find the reason for stagnant decreases in occupational injuries. Compensated occupational injuries cases were used to calculate fatal and non-fatal injury rates. Injuries from commuting accidents and sports activities were excluded as well as occupational diseases. The number of workers was adjusted to that of full time equivalent employees. Results: The fatal injury rate excluding injuries associated with commuting accidents, sports activities, and occupational diseases decreased from 12.59 in 2001 to 8.20 in 2009. In 2007, 67.5% of accidents that involved being caught in objects, which are mostly caused by machines and equipment, occurred in the manufacturing industry; this type of incident has decreased since 2001. The fatal and non-fatal injury rates in the manufacturing industry have continuously decreased while the rates in the service industry have not changed from 2001 to 2009. Non-fatal injuries might not be reported in many cases. The number of insured workers was underestimated as long working hours were not adjusted for in the reporting system. Conclusion: The occupational fatal injury rate has decreased and the non-fatal injury rate might have decreased during the last 10 years, although the statistics show stagnancy. The decrease of the injury rate was countervailed by various factors. Hence, the current accident rate does not reflect the actual situation of accidents in Korea. Korea needs to develop an improved system to more accurately calculate occupational fatal and non-fatal injury rates.

• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.4 no.4
• /
• pp.201-209
• /
• 2013

Background: The study was conducted to investigate the current status of the occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) in the construction industry and the effect of OHSMS on accident rates. Differences of awareness levels on safety issues among site general managers and occupational health and safety (OHS) managers are identified through surveys. Methods: The accident rates for the OHSMS-certified construction companies from 2006 to 2011, when the construction OHSMS became widely available, were analyzed to understand the effect of OHSMS on the work-related injury rates in the construction industry. The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency 18001 is the certification to these companies performing OHSMS in South Korea. The questionnaire was created to analyze the differences of OHSMS awareness between site general managers and OHS managers of construction companies. Results: The implementation of OHSMS among the top 100 construction companies in South Korea shows that the accident rate decreased by 67% and the fatal accident rate decreased by 10.3% during the period from 2006 to 2011. The survey in this study shows different OHSMS awareness levels between site general managers and OHS managers. The differences were motivation for developing OHSMS, external support needed for implementing OHSMS, problems and effectiveness of implementing OHSMS. Conclusion: Both work-related accident and fatal accident rates were found to be significantly reduced by implementing OHSMS in this study. The differences of OHSMS awareness between site general managers and OHS managers were identified through a survey. The effect of these differences on safety and other benefits warrants further research with proper data collection.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Disaster Information Conference
• /
• 2022.10a
• /
• pp.169-170
• /
• 2022

As the size of construction projects has become larger in recent years, the nature of the disaster safety factors along with the progress of construction is also becoming more complex and diversified. Accordingly, the introduction of computerized construction, new technologies, and new construction methods has resulted in a variety of risk factors in the process and operations, and many new safety construction methods are being tried. Since the construction industry has variable working environments and constantly changes working methods and components depending on the rate of progress, workers at construction sites are always exposed to risk depending on the specific circumstances of the construction industry. This study attempts to collect and analyze major accident cases generated by major accident construction projects as a result of progress in construction work, and to derive the major causes and causes for each safety management activity that affect safety accidents.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.23-34
• /
• 2004

The importance of the industrial safety has been growing gradually as well as the prevention activities on industrial accidents. Industrial accident rates have been decreasing by the prevention activities. However, the fatal industrial accidents such as the death tend to increase and risk per accident has increased. The previous studies on the industrial accidents focus on the entire accidents. However, these studies are lacking for the fatal industrial accidents such as the death. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics and trend of death which occurred by industrial accident, based on the real data of deaths collected last 5 years from 1999 to 2003 in korea. This paper suggests a analysis method using MDS(MultiDimensional Scaling) that considers accidents variables and properties simultaneously. We evaluate MDPREF (Multidimensional Analysis of Preference Data), one of the MDS analysis, to know the relations between the type of industry and region as well as the type of industry and occupation. This paper finds the type of industry which has high possibilities of death by regional groups. In addition, we find the type of occupation which has high possibilities of death by the type of industry. These findings indicate that industrial classification should be differently controled according to type of occupation and region.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
• /
• v.34 no.3
• /
• pp.83-88
• /
• 2019

The 7,993 cases of Survey Report of Fatal Industrial Accidents conducted jointly by the MEOL and the KOSHA for the recent seven years(2007-2013) were categorized according to personal and occupational characteristics, industry types, business sizes, job types, activities at the time accident, types of accidents, material agents(assailing materials), unsafe conditions, and unsafe acts. And it is found that among the 72.2 percent of fatal occupational accidents in the construction and manufacturing industries are caused by falling, sticking, bumping and being caught under objects & overturning. For this study, through the empirical analysis on causes of fatal industrial accidents, was used to identity high risk groups based on total data of 7,993 victims of occupational accidents. An annual fatal occupational injury (FOI) rate per 10,000 workers was about 0.47‱. The middle-aged group and the elderly group showed the highest FOI rates per 10,000 workers (0.73‱, 0.80‱), and the daily workers showed the highest FOI rate (1.46‱), and the craft and related trades workers showed the highest FOI rate (2.17‱). In case of industry type the mining industry (7.26‱) showed the highest FOI rate, followed by the sewerage, waste management, materials recovery and remediation activity industry (3.91‱) and the construction industry (2.71‱). The primary high risk target group that requires a strategy designed to reduce fatal occupation injuries caused by falling and bumping & contact(collision) is the construction industry, and the secondary high risk target group in the construction industry is classified as the equipment, machine operating and assembling workers in the construction industry, those aged 50 years old and above need the prevention measures against bumping & contact(collision) and being caught under an object & falling(objects), while those aged less than 50 years old need prevention measures against falling(persons).

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.39-46
• /
• 2022

This study has found the socio-economic factors that affect occupational accidents and measured the influence quantitatively. We built the panel data of 4 countries (Japan, Germany, the U.S., and the U.K.) and the analysis model counted on the fixed effect model to reflect the countries' differences. The fatal occupational injury rates in the analyzed countries had a statistically significant relationship with the level of per capita GDP, the proportion of the construction industry, the rate of male workers, annual average working hours, the rate of workers in manufacturing and construction industries, etc. The annual average working hours have a positive correlation with the fatal occupational injury rate. To reduce occupational accidents effectively, we should be monitoring and researching various factors that can affect the occurrence of occupational accidents such as worker characteristics, changing industrial structure, and changes in working hours.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.168-174
• /
• 2010

South Korea's industrial injuries are decreasing overall in the last 32 years. Nevertheless, the fatal occupational injury rate is still higher than in developed countries. This study was conducted to help prevention strategies of occupational injuries for the Republic of Korea. Fatal occupational injury rates were obtained from "Industrial Accident Analysis"of the Korean Ministry of Labor. Poisson regression was used to assess time trends. Socioeconomic indicators were obtained from the Korea Labor Institute and the Statistics Korea. Fatal occupational injury rates were adjusted by year, and Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between the socio-economic indicators and occupational injuries. In 1975, fatal occupational injury rate was 54.8 per 100,000 workers. With somewhat up and down, it was decreased to 21.0 in 2006. An annual rate of change for the years 1975-2006 was - 1.83%, and for the years 2002-2006 was -5.02%. As economic growth rate, paricipation rate for the age less than 25 and hours of work per week or year increased, fatal occupational injury rate also increased. Conversely, as GDP per capita, paricipation rate or employment rate for female, paricipation rate for the age 25 or more, hourly compensation costs for production workers and services output as percent of GDP increased, fatal occupational injury rate decreased. By the development of safety techniques and the adoption of more legislative constraints, developed economy reduce occupational injuries. Conversely, economic growth may raise occupational injuries. Therefore, prevention strategies are needed to manage both of them. We need to make an effort to prevent occupational injuries due to not only sexual differences, but also job differences between male and female. Preventive strategies are needed to consider the characteristics of younger workers. Addition to wage, other appropriate variables for work condition should be considered together. Extending work hours is need to be regulated with systemic methods.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.307-320
• /
• 2017

The objective of this study is to identify the effectiveness of ESC(Electronic Stability Control) based on a meta analysis technique. Accident Rate, Fatal Crash Rate, Loss of Control Crash Rate were set as indexes of traffic safety evaluation. Also, reviews on the effectiveness of ESC were collected using keyword, 'ESC'. As a result, the Effect size of accident rate odd ratio was 0.90. When ESC system was applied on vehicles, accident rate decreased by 10%. Also, the Effect size of fatal crash rate odd ratio was 0.64. When ESC system was applied on vehicles, fatal crash rate decreased by 36%. Lastly, the Effect size of loss of control crash rate odd ratio was 0.73. When ESC system was applied on vehicles, loss of control crash rate decreased by 27%. The outcome of this study would be effectively used for developing polices and regulations for ESC installation obligation of commercial vehicles.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2022.06a
• /
• pp.153-161
• /
• 2022

Among all industries, the construction industry still remains a traditional one with low productivity due to its labor-intensive and field-dependent production system, its supplier-oriented industrial structure, and the disruption of the information flow between participants. In addition, the construction industry in South Korea has recently been required to transform itself according to social trends such as aging, the reduction of skilled workers, and the shortening of working hours, and the disaster and death rates in the industry, which are more than twice as high as those in other industries, are making it more necessary to solve chronic safety problems. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to grasp the actual condition of safety management on construction sites in South Korea and analyze cases of K-smart technology utilization for preventing safety accidents on construction sites. The study investigated and analyzed the following. First, construction sites in South Korea were analyzed by type of safety accident, by type of construction, and by construction contract amount. Second, the current status of accidents on small-sized construction sites with a high fatal accident rate and cases of safety accidents on construction sites were investigated. The results of the study are expected to contribute to the dissemination and spread of smart safety technology for not only identifying major factors in safety accidents that occur on construction sites but also preventing workers from suffering accidents.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.168-181
• /
• 2023

This study analyzed the effects of traffic enforcement on accident reduction. The results revealed a significant reduction in both overall accidents (28.53%) and fatal accidents (39.44%). Notably, enforcement equipment targeting speed limits of 30 km/h and 50 km/h demonstrated similar accident reduction rates of 42.23% and 25.85%, respectively. However, variations were observed based on accident types and types of traffic violations. Therefore, it is evident that enforcement equipment yields distinct accident reduction effects depending on speed limits and types of traffic accidents. This finding underscores the potential for making informed policy decisions to enhance traffic safety measures.