The dominance of accidents caused by banalities

Most prevention analysis is focused on high risks, such as explosion, fire, lack of containment for chemicals, crashes in transportation systems, lack of oxygen, or chemical poisoning. In the industrial world, these kinds of risk still lead to incidents with huge consequences, albeit very seldom. Nevertheless, the fact is that the simpler accidents normally caused by what might be regarded as banalities occur at a much higher frequencies and with many more fatalities and invalidities than any of what are usually regarded as the most dangerous kinds of accidents. In depth analysis of national statistics on accidents could reveal the kind of accidents we are talking about, where they happen, to whom, how, and what can be done about them. This would require a special registration system of the events leading up to the accident. The main results for the four most frequent types of accident will be described as an example of how much information such systems can offer in general for the work of accident prevention in more traditional and common enterprises.