Accidents and fatal accidents - some paradoxes

This study discusses the relationship between fatal accidents in the workplace and certain macro-structural features of production life in Finland during the period from 1977 to 1991. The fatality rate was studied in relation to variables describing economic activity and the frequency of non-fatal accidents. Construction and manufacturing were studied separately According to the results the relationship between fatal and non-fatal accidents was reverse, in the case of construction, in a statistically significant way. In the construction industry the fatality rate increased with declining number of cubic metres under construction. The results did not lend support to pro-cyclic approximations of the relation between business cycles and fatal accidents, but supported the hypothesis of the different causation of different accident types. On the other hand, in the case of non-fatal accidents, the social construction of accident statistics must also be taken into account. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.