Accidents and fatal accidents—some paradoxes

Although many occupational injury studies have been conducted on the construction industry, fatal injuries and lost work time injuries in this industry continue to rank among the highest in the nation. This paper presents an analysis of nonfatal (1981 through 1986) and fatal (1980 through 1989) traumatic occupational injuries in the construction industry using the Supplementary Data System and the National Traumatic Occupational Fatalities data bases. The lost workday case rate in construction was 10.1 per 100 full-time workers, which was nearly 2.5 times the occupational injury rate for all industries combined. The construction industry had an overall fatality rate of 25.6 per 100,000 full-time workers. This rate was more than 3.5 times the occupational fatality rate for all industries in the United States for the same period. To prevent occupational injuries and fatalities in the construction industry, intervention measures need to target specific occupations: machine operators, transportation workers, and crafts-people. Intervention measures also need to target such causes of injury as falls, electrocutions, and motor vehicle incidents.