STUDY TREND OF SLIP, TRIP, FALL(STF) IN KOREA
Woonchul Shin1
1

Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute for Safety, KOSHA.
478, Munemi-ro, Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, Republic of korea

Now a day, the accident rate shows 0.6% in Korea. The fatal injuries are of 461
cases from construction industry and 336 cases from manufacturing industry. Our
goal of accident rate is 0.5% and that of fatality rate per 10,000 persons is 0.7 in2014. There are many accidents caused by human errors as can be seen in slipaccidents. We will also focus on the research for the prevention of falls caused byhuman errors especially in the construction industry. Unless one commit suicide,falls are results of accidents. The primary cause of a fall can be a slip, trip ormisstep. So far, construction industry has implemented the accident prevention plan
only for misstep as a primary cause. There were no analysis items and no analyzed
data about fall by the slip and trip accidents in the construction. We will analyze
construction accidents by primary causes and endeavor to prevent accidents infuture.

Introduction
The number of occupational injuries in Korea was 92,256 in 2012. Among these, occupational
diseases were 7,472 cases and injuries were 84,784 cases. The accident rate shows 0.6%. The
accident rate has been stagnant around 0.7% for recent 10 years. However, it reduced to 0.65% in
2012. Also, the fatal injuries have exceeded 2100 cases every year. The deaths of illnesses were 730
and fatal injuries were 1.435 in 2012. The fatal injuries are of 461 cases from construction industry
and 336 cases from manufacturing industry.
In order to reduce the stagnating industrial accidents in Korea, Ministry of Employment andLabor and KOSHA had tried various approaches. The goal of the KOSHA is reducing 5% both forthe accident rate and fatality rate for every year. Our goal of accident rate is 0.5% and that of fatality
rate per 10,000 persons is 0.7 in 2014. (fatality rate, OECD 0.4 in 2008, Korea 0.96 in 2011, 0.4 in2030)

MeasureThe major measures for reduction of accident rate are encouraging risk assessment, OSHAS 18001
safety management system, etc., mainly to motivate implementation of self-regulating system atworkplaces. This means that the essential philosophy for accident prevention was changed fromregulation to autonomy. The autonomy can achieve more than simply keeping rules but regulation
has a certain limitation. The measures against fatalities are rare in Korea. The fatality rate per
10,000 persons of Korea ranked 27th among 27 member countries of the OECD. We set a goal of
reducing of fatality rate from 2012 and try a lot of the efforts.

-9-Figure 1. Accident rate and number of businesses by years
Existing researches for the reduction of accident rate were hardware-oriented such as protection
devices of machines. There are many accidents caused by human errors as can be seen in slip
accidents. We will research more for human error in the future. The type of accidents are classified
into STF, caught-in or between, and fall from higher level, etc. Investigation of individual case ofSTF accidents shows that prevention measures targeting to human factors need more attention. The
unsafe act with its counterpart unsafe condition can be seen everywhere in accidents causation
analysis. However, it could not be used as a concrete prevention measure because of lack of detailed
items. In the future, we will use the Fool proof(P) or Fail safe(S) to supplement unsafe act relating
to human factor. The analysis for fatality injuries about 1100 cases in 2011 shows that P could besolution for 80% cases, S for 20% cases. The main causes relating to human factors appear to bevisibility or communication problem. STF accidents reaches around 30% of all occupational
accidents. We have studied STF for recent seven years. STF accidents are consist of about 50% byslip, 20% by trip, 30% by fall from same level. Main factors causing STF accidents are floor
materials, contaminants, shoes, and human as treated in biomechanics. These four main factors canbe combined into lots of different factors. So, biomechanics has difficulties to take role of main
measure of controlling industrial accidents. In my humble opinion, the history of individual can beregarded as variable. Because the study targeting human reflects the whole history of human beings
who have lived since three million years ago. The results of these studies have contributed to theaccident prevention to a certain degree, but not remarkably.
Some of the researches performed by our center are as follows.
1. The suggestion of technique of risk assessment for STF accidents at workplaces.
x The evaluation factors were floor materials, contaminants, floor conditions, type of shoes,worker's postures of work.
x Shows the most dangerous part of the whole floor area.
2. The draft of Korean governmental notification "criteria of slip characteristics of safety shoes"x development of measuring toolx Suggestion of standard for frictional resistance of floors; Less than 0.5 : risky floor0.5~0.6 :normal floor, More than 0.6 : safe floor
3. Development of measuring tools of various friction factors.
x Reflects human factors- 10 -

xx

Drag-type tool containing load cell is easy to use and make measurements.
The measuring tools about slip developed such as portable push-type, robot, tool of trip
and fall, etc.

We are going to study for prevention of the caught-in or between type accidents focusing on
the human error. Similar to the this year's study of prevention for the woods and veneer
manufacturing industry focusing on human behavior's characteristic. We are going to pay more
attention to ergonomics for accident prevention similar to the studies of STF in Korea. We want
to share and exchange of papers, opinions, and other informations with Japan in this field too.

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