[The human factor in accidents]

Data on accidents at work and traffic accidents in different countries are discussed. Comparison of the number of war victims and victims of accidents shows the latter to be more numerous. Public opinion towards is less negative than towards several infectious diseases. The reason for this is the (wrong) opinion that people can prevent getting involved in an accident. There are many reasons why the progress in our knowledge of the phenomenon of accidents has not been faster. The distribution of accidents does not fit the model of chance distribution, but it fits quite well into negative binomial distribution, which is a model of "unequal accident proneness" hypothesis. The term "accident proneness" originated as a result of controversy between European (Eysenck, Shaw and others) and American (Suchman, Haight and others) psychologists. Today, the discrepancy in the attitudes has come to be much slighter because of the more dynamic and situational approach to the phenomenon of "accident proneness". The phenomenon is defined as possession of the qualities that are harmful to safe work at a certain moment or/and lack of possession of the qualities that are indispensable for safe work at that same moment. Certain factors associated with "accident proneness", however, are stable and general: personality and sex. Some are prone to changing slowly during one's lifetime: age and experience. Many are accidental: alcohol, illness, fatigue, mood etc. Ramsey's model of accident proneness in presented in more detail. The model includes interaction between man and an objective situation at different levels: cognitive, conative and psychomotor.