Accident Investigation Process: Preventing Recurrence

Posted on Jun 23, 2025 in Social sciences

Any accident investigation seeks to discover as accurately as possible the circumstances and risk situations that led to its occurrence. The goal is to identify causes by understanding the facts. To achieve this, the investigation should follow five successive stages: data collection, data integration, determination of causes, selection of main causes, and management of causes. The ultimate aim is to eliminate the accident’s determinants, prevent recurrence, and apply lessons learned to enhance prevention.

Data Collection

This stage aims to reconstruct the accident scene in situ, considering all direct and indirect factors that contributed to its occurrence, including material, environmental, human, and organizational aspects. When collecting this data, the following details must be considered:

  • Avoid seeking blame: focus on causes, not culprits.
  • Accept only specific, objective, and established facts; avoid interpretations, assumptions, or value judgments.
  • Conduct the investigation as immediately as possible after the event to ensure the reliability of collected data and its accuracy regarding the accident’s situation.
  • Gather information separately to avoid undue influence.
  • Reconstruct the accident site; a thorough understanding of the event requires knowledge of workplace layout and organization.
  • Consider all aspects potentially involved in the accident: material conditions, environmental factors, organizational issues, and human behavior.

Data Integration

This stage seeks to answer the question: What happened? It involves processing and comprehensively assessing the gathered information to understand the entire accident sequence.

Determination of Causes

This stage seeks answers to the question: Why did it happen? It involves analyzing the facts to identify the accident’s causes. The following criteria should be applied:

  • Causes must always be actual actors, events, or circumstances present at the time of the accident, not hypothetical ones.
  • Only established facts should be accepted as root causes, never mere assumptions.
  • Remember that an accident is rarely explained by a single cause; instead, it usually results from several interconnected causes.

Selection of Main Causes

This stage involves selecting the identified causes that played a decisive role in the accident (main causes). To determine if a cause is primary, the following criteria can be used:

  • Main causes must be actionable, meaning they can be addressed within sociological, technological, and economic contexts.
  • Main causes should be individual factors whose elimination prevents the recurrence of the accident or its consequences in most, if not all, cases.

Management of Causes

Once causes are identified and main ones selected, proposals should be developed to prevent recurrence. The management of causes involves prioritizing corrective actions.