Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,867 U.S. citizens died from fatal workplace injuries in 2015. It’s a major decrease from the early 90’s when the BLS found that 6,632 workers died between 1993 and 1994. Still, there was a slight increase from 2014 to 2015 in worker deaths. The popular opinion is that stricter safety regulations and more advanced job-related equipment continue to increase job safety for these deadliest professions, but safety experts disagree. Maybe we’ve reached a turning point?
While regulations and engineering most likely had a heavy hand in making jobs safer from the 90’s until now, these strategies can only help for so long. There are several explanations as to why, like the phenomenon of risk homeostasis. What this article focuses on, though, is making those deadliest professions safer through human factors, such as education and training, paired with regulations and engineering safer equipment.
