Comparing and Contrasting some of the Approaches in UK and USA Safety Assessment Processes

Abstract

Humanity is thinking very hard about how accidents initiate, develop and propagate into disasters, such that they can be prevented or interrupted before they have opportunity to cause harm, injury or loss. Many industries and countries have authorities and inspector organisations that research and police hazardous areas of work and judge safety performance. Evidence is often called for in demonstration of safety performance and this has many beneficial features, from identifying areas for improvement to providing defence evidence in legal cases. The focus of the approaches to compile the evidence is always concerned with understanding the safety status of a system with the familiar goal of avoiding future accidents. However, there are differences in these approaches across the many industries and nations of the world, and interestingly, differences in national and industrial fatal accident statistics.

This paper seeks to review some of the approaches to safety assessment and evidence collection in just two nations — the USA and the UK. Further, this paper seeks to evaluate whether any differences in approach could be considered as contributory causes to the differences in fatal accident rates between these nations.