Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)

© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

OCCUPATIONAL ACCIDENT IN MALAYSIA FROM 2010 TO 2014: AN

ANALYSIS USING ACCIDENT CAUSATION MODEL (ACM)

M Khairul Shaleh*, Abdul Mutalib Leman,

Faculty of Engineering Technology, University Tun Hussein Onn,Batu Pahat, Johor 86400, Malaysia

*Corresponding author email: khairulshaleh@gmail.com

ABSTRACT. Previous occupational safety and health accident reports provide a wealth
of information that can be used to develop lessons learned and creating better strategy to improve safety
and efficiency of operations at workplace. This research evaluated trends of the fatal and non-fatal
occupational accident by applying Accident Causation Model (ACM). The analysis at first assessed the
distributions of the accident by classifying them into kinds of accident using RIDDOR analysis and
secondly it study about the two element of accident precursor events and contributing factor that led to the
accident as proposed by ACM. The findings of this research identified several kind of accident
classification that can be used to develop a better understanding of occupational accidents and potentially
improve safety and efficiency of operations at workplace.

Keywords. Accident Evaluation, DOSH, Accident Causation Analysis, RIDDOR, Safety

INTRODUCTION
Malaysian occupational accident rate and fatality rate were officially reported to be 3.28
and 3.10 per 1000 workers and 4.62 and 4.21per 100,000 workers, respectively, in 2013 and 2014
according to official report by Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) [1].
According to Human Resources Minister, the cause of the accident was due to various factors
including ineffectiveness of safety management systems, no risk assessment conducted at the
worksite, lack of training to employees and indifferent attitude about safety. Data indicate that
number of cases in the period from 2010 to 2014 was 13,408 cases, of which 12,485 were injured
and 923 fatalities. Although there is a significant reduction to 5 years to the categories of fatal
accidents, the data is still categorized as high. Studies have shown that analysing these accidents
and applying lessons learned from them helps to avoid future accidents and reduce risk [2].

There are many methodologies introduce of classifying of accident causation. Every

method has their own advantages and disadvantages based on the nature of data sources and the
objective of the analysis. Each analysis serves different purposes and each uses different methods
to meet those objectives. Deker[3] as example has identified four purposes of accident
investigations, that is, establishing what happened; preventive, identifying pathways to avoid
future accidents; moral, tracing the transgressions that were committed and reinforcing moral and
regulatory boundaries; and existential, finding an explanation for the suffering that occurred. In
the other approaches, Le Coze [4] highlighted the need to apply the lessons of accident
investigations to public policy to improve public safety, a consideration that rarely applies to
empirical research. Kahn and Abbasi [5], analysed several accident databases, to understand the
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

common causes which led to accidents at fixed chemical facilities. Another popular form of
analysing individual accidents is a causal analysis, or the determination of the problem which
introduced by Heinrich [6], without which the accident would not have occurred.

This study aims to sort the accident data classification that of the fatal and non-fatal injury
rates by re-analyzing the current occupational injury data and to clarify whether the non-fatal
injury rate has been stagnant or decreasing during the last 5 years. The lessons learned through
such causal analysis can be collected and shared through regulatory and industry groups to raise
awareness of certain types of events with the hope of preventing similar events from occurring in
the future. The analysis will apply accident causation model introduced by Reason [7].

1.0 Accident Causation Models

The first accident causation model was developing from Heinrich’s domino theory that
covers all industries [6] accident causation events. As first proposed by Heinrich in the 1930s,
considers that human behavior deficiencies, preceded and influenced by social and environmental
factors, and might lead to an unsafe state, accident, and injury. Bird [8] proposed the modified
domino theories suggested that management and organizational aspects are fundamental
underlying factors in accident causation. Many models of accident causation have been proposed,
ranging from Heinrich's domino theory to the latest refined Management Oversight and Risk Tree
(MORT) [9].

Reason [7] introduced multi-causality of accidents based on ACM in late 1980s.

According to Reason, the accident causation process is an interaction between hidden and active
failures and to avoid this interaction, the pro-active involvement of top management is needed.
Active failures are the immediate observable causes in an accident and they are easily identified.
In contrast, latent failures may be occur in the system for many years, before being revealed by
active failures and they are difficult to detect, as they are unseen in the organization as example
as unfitted design, lack in supervision, insufficient training and incompetent personnel [7]. It will
explain by the Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Accident Causation Model Based on Reason (1990)

Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

In order to build a classification of the accident causation models presented above, we

divide them in three major groups. The first is ‘‘sequential accident models”, a term also used by
Williamson [10] and Hollnagel [11], which describe the accident as a series of events in a
specific order, as proposed in the domino theory. The second is ‘‘human information processing
accident models”, introduced by Lehto and Salvendy [12], which define the accident in terms of
human behavior and actions, and the third is ‘‘systemic accident models”, a term also used by
Hollnagel [11], such as Reason’s model which include organizational and management factors
and describe the causation contribution to accident events.

1.1 The classification system

Adapted from model proposed by Williomson[10] , Hollnagel[11] and Reason[7] for
comprehensive ACM, a detail accident causation classification system has been developed. The
system introduced allowed coding for the events up to three stages which is immediately leading
to the accident and subsequent fatality as well as any others further factors that made a direct
contribution to incident of the accident or fatality. Every events were classified according to their
relation location in the contributing factor respectively such that first event (PE1) occurred closet
to the accident in time and the third event (PE3) is the further event occurs longer time form the
accident events.

Figure 2: The ACM diagram of Precursor Events and Contributing Factors

Figure 1 represent the simple model attempts to illustrate three categories of events that
identified as the causes of any accident that are - equipment, environment, medical and behavior.
Any accident will fall into one of this categories events and each category should be the result
from one of the contributing factors. Each category is examined more closely below.

Table 1: Categories were coded for each of the nature of the three possible precursor events:
Cod Categories Precursor Events
e
PE1 Environmental Events resulting from the location of the accident and could not be
changed at that point in time.
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

PE2 Equipment Events resulting from breakages or malfunctions of machinery or

tools that occurred at that point in time.
PE3 Medical Events resulting from the person’s current state of physical well-
being.
PE4 Behavioral events resulting directly from human involvement

Table 2: The nature of the contributing factors was coded in the following categories:
Cod Categories Contributing Factors
e
CF1 Environment Factors occurring earlier in time resulting from the location of the
accident.
CF2 Equipment factors associated with the design of machinery, tools, personal
protective equipment or safety equipment
CF3 Work practice Factors involving poor or risky standard operating procedures
accepted by management and/or personnel. This included separate
categories of poor upkeep or misuse of equipment.
CF4 Supervision Factors relating to inadequate charge of workers.
CF5 Training Factors relating to inadequate training of workers.
CF6 Task error Factors relating to incorrect performance of duty.
CF7 Medical Factors involving physical well-being at an earlier time.
CF8 Other Factors including alcohol and drug involvement, delays in reaching
medical treatment and social factors.

METHODOLOGIES
The data from Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) Malaysia online
platform were used as a main sources database for the study. The search was restricted to the
preview report case by case in DOSH Annual Reporting data between 2010 and 2014. Two main
data were developed from the raw data that are basic occupational accident report summary and
accident causation data with classification.

A three-step iterative process was used in order to categories the reviews within the five
years of accident data. At the first step, the accidents and cause of accident were briefly scanned,
and an appropriate causation of accident type apportioned against it. Next, each accident cases
was critically reviewed in terms of source of accident, industries categorizes and detail report
were specifically reviewed; and this was used to either confirm the closes selection of accident
causation categorized. For cases that did not appear clearly to fit in any of the classifications, the
report were conclusively were reviewed closely; this final stage either confirmed the choice, or
re-classify to a different classification.

This third stage of review was also used to place the accident report in particularly under
any of the five categorize of ACM. The process is illustrated in Figure 2.
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Figure 2: The process flow of ACM classification

The data then classified using Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences
Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR) [13] apply to the health and social care sector. Table 1 shows the
number of reports for each corresponding year for the period 2010–2014 involving occupational
accident which were analyzed.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The main findings from the analysis of 13408 accident reports are summarized and
discussed in this section.

3.1 Annual occupational accident rate

The accident rate per 1000 workers was ranged from 3.1 to 3.7. The highest rated
recorded in 2010 where the 3.7 ratio where occurs. In the other hand the fatality rate per 100,000
workers was in the ranged of 4.2 to 6.5 in ratio. The highest fatality rate occurs in 2010 where the
6.5 ratio recorded. Both ratio show the positive pattern at the descending rate which indicate that
the positive outcome of occupational strategies and activities.

Table 3: The occupational incident and fatality rate for the period 2010 until 2014
Category 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Incident rate per 1000 workers 3.68 3.4 3.31 3.28 3.1
Fatality rate per 100,000
workers 6.45 6.17 4.64 4.62 4.21

3.2. Number of fatalities and serious injuries of the accident per sector

The 13408 occupational accidents recoded in the particular period with 923 (6.88%)
fatalities, 875 (6.43%) accidents with result to permanent disability and 11610 (86.6%) for non-
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

permanent disability. Table 4 represent the fatal and non-fatal occupational accident through out
11 categorizes sector as well as Manufacturing, Mining and Quarrying; Construction;
Agriculture; Forestry; Logging and Fishery; Utility; Transport; Storage and Communication;
Wholesale and Retail Trade; Hotel and Restaurant; Financial, Insurance; Real Estate and
Business Services and Public Services and Statutory Bodies.

The 13408 accidents involving workers took place in numerous different industrial
sectors, as illustrated by Table 4. In total of 923 fatal occupational accident recorded,
construction sector contribute the highest rate at 35.2% of overall score while the second and
third sector were manufacturing and agriculture which result to 26.8% and 19.9% respectively.
These the sectors were the main contributors to the score in comparative to other seven sectors
that only contribute far lower score at 0.2% to 7.6%. The non-fatal accident contributes from
12485 number of accident which manufacturing sector represents the highest at 65.3% of the total
score. The second highest is aagriculture, forestry, logging and fishery sector which contribute to
17.8% of the overall score. The rest of the sector contributes to less significant score which only
represent 1.0 to 2.8% of the total cases.

Table 4: Distribution of non-fatal and fatal occupational accident in Malaysia (2010-2014).

Fatal Occupational Non-fatal Occupational
Sector Accident Accident
Cases % Cases %
Manufacturing 247 26.8 8155 65.3
Mining and Quarrying 35 3.8 243 1.9
Construction 325 35.2 349 2.8
Agriculture, Forestry, Logging and
Fishery 184 19.9 2225 17.8
Utility 28 3.0 344 2.8
Transport, Storage and
Communication 70 7.6 316 2.5
Wholesale and Retail Trade 13 1.4 233 1.9
Hotel and Restaurant 2 0.2 123 1.0
Financial, Insurance, Real Estate and
Business Services 8 0.9 257 2.1
Public Services and Statutory Bodies 11 1.2 240 1.9
Total 923 100 12485 100

3.3 Type of accident involves

The 235 cause of major occupational accidents report involving fatalities case took place
in various different industrial sectors were categorized into 16 kinds as suggested by RIDDOR, as
illustrated by Table 3. Moreover, the type of accident involved in the 235 accidents was quite
different. Most of the cases in happened regarding fall from height cases which represent 26.8%.
Majority of the cases involving these cases happen in constructions industry (41 cases). The cases
of fall from scaffolding fall from high rise building and lifter in the constructions site where most
popular cases involve.
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

In other kind of accident, the cases of struck by moving object, trapped by something
collapsing/overturning and struck by moving, including flying/falling, object represent other 3
kind of popular accident cases at 17%, 10.2% and 9.8% respectively. The most contributor of the
struck by moving object was from constructions (7 cases) and agriculture (7 cases). Electrocution
is also a contributing factor at 7.2% with occurrences at various sectors.

Hitting by moving vehicle and trapped by something collapsing caused most fatal
accidents in constructions sector. In the agriculture sector, main two causes were hit by
collapsing tree and hit by moving vehicle. Whereas, in manufacturing sector, struck between
rotating rollers and moving belts of conveyors were the most causes of fatal injuries with
conveyors. Casualties while conducting material feeding or loading and material unloading using
mobile crane equipment is also part of main contributors in statistics (e.g. sky lift and tower
crane). In several accidents, workers were trapped and were crushed between moving part of
machinery and fixed structures (e.g. ceiling, frames, walls, rotating part). Electrocution is one of
the main causes of fatal accident which is involving strike by lighting and contacting with
electricity while doing installation and maintenance job.

Table 3: Distribution of cause of fatal occupational accident in Malaysia (2010-2014).

Cause of Injuries Cases %
Falls from a height 63 26.8
Struck by moving vehicle 40 17.0
Trapped by something collapsing/overturning 24 10.2
Struck by moving, including flying/falling, object 23 9.8
Contact with electricity or electrical discharge 17 7.2
Strike against something fixed or stationary 13 5.5
Slips, trips or falls on same level 11 4.7
Drowning or asphyxiation 11 4.7
Exposure to, or contact with, a harmful substance 8 3.4
Contact with moving machinery 7 3.0
Injured while handling, lifting or carrying 6 2.6
Exposure to fire 6 2.6
Exposure to an explosion 2 0.9
Injured by an animal 2 0.9
Other kind of accident 2 0.9
Acts of violence 0 0.0

3.4 Accident causation distribution

Many accidents occurred as a precursor events at a highly dangerous environment, where

the operator entered a hazardous zone of workplace. The workplace such as construction site,
working at high, working in the forest with high exposure of the danger is the main place where
the accident occurs. Most of the cases involve the negligent of many parties that end up to the
accident to occur. Table 5 summarizes the precursor events and contributing factors that led the
accident occurs. It was found that in the precursor events, 97.9% of accidents were linked to
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

workplace environment, and 50% is due to equipment failure, 77.4% of accidents to behavioral
issues.

In the issue of behavioral misconduct, it was clearly indicated that the worker actually
didn’t follow safety standard that introduce by the workplace and the authorities. In most of the
fall from height cases is due to not using safety harness when performing work at height. It was
observed that operators tend to compensate for poor supervision and monitoring that force
themselves caught into accidents. . In an accident worker was performing repairing job while the
conveyor was running cause him to struck into the conveyor belt. Other important accident
precursor events are equipment failure (50%). The detailed study in the cases involve indicate
that poor preventive maintenance to the machinery used and unsuitable type of machine used in
performing the job. In one accident 4 workers died as the passenger hoist crashed from level 10
to the ground floor due to the passenger hoist operational failure. In another accident, an operator
fell down due to being hit by broken 'lifting lug' on the shaft. The incident took place during the
preparation of lifting works using Overhead Travelling Crane (OTC). Preventive maintenance
strategies should include checking that existing safeguards were in working conditions and that
the safeguards which have been defeated were restored to their original functions.

The contributing factors issues show that 98.7% of the accident has contributed from the
unsafe environment. It is clearly indicate that most of the workplace didn’t conduct hazard
analysis that will help them to anticipate hazard and danger. In one accident, the victim was using
a short-cut passage which enabled him to go other site of workplace has struck by moving
equipment that realize that the victims was at the site. The handling of material transportation has
caused accidents due to the safeguards of the walkway passage were absent or inadequate. Lack
of clear and safe working methods during performing high risk activities is the second most
contributing factors at 92.8%. Failure of providing and practicing safe work practice when
performing routine job, performing removing excess material, picking up material inside the
hazardous site and performing reposition material has become among highest accident
contributor.

Lack of supervision (50.3%) and training (40%), issues of task error (44.7%), equipment
failure (26%) and medical issues (0.9%) also found to have contribution to the accident events.
Their contributing factors to the accident cannot be ignored since they where involving 26% to
45% of the total accidents events. The issues regarding this such as incompetent supervisor,
unsafe equipment used, untrained workers and wrong appointment of task should also take into
consideration of the future safety strategies.

Table 5: Accident causation distribution for fatal occupational accident in Malaysia (2010-2014).
Category Accident Causation Cases Percentage
Precursor Events Environmental 230 97.9
Equipment 119 50.6
Medical 3 1.3
Behavioral 182 77.4
Contributing Environment 232 98.7
Factors Equipment 63 26.8
Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences 2016 (ICSESS2016)
© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Work Practice 218 92.8

Supervision 118 50.2
Training 94 40.0
Task Error 105 44.7
Medical 2 0.9
Other 0 0.0

CONCLUSION
The paper is aimed to understand the various reasons causing fatal occupational accident in
varies form of industrial sector in Malaysia using the ACM. Therefore, 235 accidents reports
related to occupational fatal accidents in Malaysia were analyzed. All the accident cases were
categorized into 10 sectors and were divided into 16 kinds of accident as suggested by RIDDOR.
It was found that 35.2% of fatal accidents were linked to the constructions activities, 26.8% of
accidents related to manufacturing, 19.9% of accidents related to agriculture, forestry, logging
and fishery activities and 7.6% involving transport, storage and communication sectors. The 5
main kinds of accidents were found to be:

 Falls from a height

 Struck by moving vehicle
 Trapped by something collapsing/overturning
 Struck by moving, including flying/falling, object
 Contact with electricity or electrical discharge
In depth understanding of the issues, detail cause of the accident has result to the analysis of
accident causation for precursor events and contributing factors. The accidents were
characterized and analyzed to determine their causes. The study has shown that having a safety
trained workers does not necessarily mean that work at risk is out and that hazards are eliminated.
The study clearly reveals that the environmental and behavioral issues are main factors of
precursor events for most of the accident. Further result for the major contributing factors
indicated that accident is mostly contributed by unsafe environment and work practice. The
second group of most accident contributors is training and task error issues.

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© Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

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