There is no quarrel with the undesirable reference, but the belief that accidents are unexpected or the result of fortune or chance is misleading. They are failures on our part and failures on the part of others. Stating that someone was killed or injured in an accident tends to exonerate the person responsible. The Council said it will seek better ways to describe such incidents and encourage people to think of risk causes. The word accident is inaccurate in safety usage because it implies bad luck, chance or fate.
Most employers are simply unaware of what their human and financial costs are.
When employers focus on medical costs the primary emphasis has been on finding less expensive medical treatment. That's fine as far as it goes, but it is more cost effective to eliminate the causes of the expenditures in the first place. This lack of knowledge is easily remedied by making a cost study. This amount will be a real eye-opener for employers. Table 3. is a summary of a recent cost study done by a corporation with over 60,000 employees.