Safety Research in the 20th Century – Have We Made a Difference?

Details

• Personal Author:
  Braun CC ; Dejoy DL ; Greene BL ; Hsiao H ; Mortimer RG ; Resnick ML ; Waters Deppa S
• Description:
  Safety has been recognized officially as an important concern for over 100 years. The Railway Safety Act was enacted in the US in 1893. In 1908, U.S. Steel began a corporate safety program (Hammer, 1989). In order to satisfy the safety needs of both the industrial worker and the public, researchers have evaluated and investigated the principles of safety. Many publications have suggested that safety can be improved by applying a particular method or design. However, there has been some question as to whether many of the results of safety research are applicable in applied settings. Post-modernist thinking suggests that research must be conducted in the particular environment of its intended application to be appropriate. This "systems approach" has long been recognized in the Human Factors profession (Meister, 1988) in general, but not always applied in practice. A discussion among safety professionals at the 1998 Safety Technical Group Business Meeting questioned whether safety research has provided much of use to the design community. For example, studies have reported that ANSI Z535.3 standard warning icons are often not well understood by users (Deppa and Martin, 1997; Martin and Deppa, 1997). This is not a new debate in Human Factors (Boff, 1988; Rouse, 1987) but is critical as we set a research agenda for the new millennium. This panel addresses the progress of safety research over the past one hundred years. Panelists present their views on the applicability of safety research in several application areas, including safety warnings, consumer products, industrial workplaces, and automotive systems. Panelists represent academia, government and consulting. Particular attention is placed on the applicability of existing research in practice. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Workplace
• Keywords:
  Human-factors-engineering Safety-climate Safety-practices Safety-programs Safety-research Work-environment Work-practices
• ISBN:
  0945289138
• Publisher:
  Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  California ; Florida ; Georgia ; Idaho ; Illinois ; Maryland ; OSHA Region 10 ; OSHA Region 3 ; OSHA Region 4 ; OSHA Region 5 ; OSHA Region 9 ; West Virginia
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DSR - Division of Safety Research
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  356-359
• Volume:
  44
• Issue:
  27
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20026158
• Citation:
  Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. Proceedings of the IEA 2000/HFES 2000 Congress, July 30-August 4, 2000, San Diego, California. Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 2000 Jul; 44(27):356-359
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2000
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Source Full Name:
  Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. Proceedings of the IEA 2000/HFES 2000 Congress, July 30-August 4, 2000, San Diego, California
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:d0973cc4b509c2229eeac26bd3811167bfd7d77fbccefc96cef6d47ea0de8319970cbbb5c248da4e80f6991def54a9671d6ac6d4f1a97b24bbef20ad715f8706
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/197215/cdc_197215_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 904.37 KB ]