Relationship between unsafe working conditions and workers' behavior and impact of working conditions on injury severity in U.S. construction industry

Unsafe acts of workers (e.g., misjudgment or inappropriate operation) become the major root causes of construction accidents when they are combined with unsafe working conditions (e.g., work surface conditions or weather) on a construction site. The overarching goal of the research presented in this paper is to explore ways to prevent unsafe acts of workers and reduce the likelihood of construction accidents occurring. The study specifically aims to (1) understand the relationships between human behavior related and working condition related risk factors, (2) identify the significant behavior and condition factors and their impacts on accident types (e.g., struck by/against, caught in/between, falling, shock, inhalation/ingestion/absorption, or respiratory failure) and injury severity (e.g., fatality, hospitalized, or nonhospitalized), and (3) analyze the fundamental accident-injury relationship on how each accident type contributes to the injury severity. The study reviewed 9,358 accidents that occurred in the U.S. construction industry between 2002 and 2011. The large number of accident samples supported reliable statistical analyses. The analysis identified a total of 17 significant correlations between behavior and condition factors and distinguished key risk factors that highly impacted on the determination of accident types and injury severity. The research outcomes will assist safety managers to control specific unsafe acts of workers by eliminating the associated unsafe working conditions and vice versa. They also can prioritize risk factors and pay more attention to controlling them to achieve a safer working environment.