In 1907, according to a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall fatality rate in the iron and steel industry was about 220 per 100,000 full-time workers. By 2019, however, that rate had fallen to only 26.3 per 100,000, a reduction of almost 90%.
I was surprised by this reduction number—it seems lower than I expected! If you’d asked me by how much the fatality rate in such an industry had fallen 1907–2019, I would’ve predicted a reduction closer to 99% than 90%.
Why is this? What things kill people in this industry today? And why cannot these causes of workplace fatalities be reduced further?
This question seems susceptible to base rate problems.
The linked document in the quote is by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It covers fatal occupational injuries, and according to the graph on page 2, the most common category of fatal injuries, by far, is Transportation incidents, which presumably include car and truck accidents.
And page 3 of the report (with a corresponding table on page 9) compares fatal injuries by select occupations, and has fatality rates for “Structural iron and steel workers” at the same rate as “Driver/sales workers and truck drivers”, and below e.g. Roofers (2x the fatality rate), Aircraft pilots and flight engineers (2.4x the rate), and especially fishing and hunting workers (5.5x the rate).
Unfortunately the report didn’t provide fatality rates for e.g. desk jobs, and I don’t have the energy to look those up. Suffice it to say that once you’ve reached the point where your physically demanding job has a fatality rate on par with fatality rates in car-based professions, it may still be possible to improve, but it probably won’t be easy.
What things kill people in this industry today? And why cannot these causes of workplace fatalities be reduced further?
I don’t know the first one, but I am pretty sure the answer to the second one is “because that would make things more expensive”. (Fundamentally, the same reason why all code isn’t unit-tested.) The punishments for workplace fatalities are set externally, the company does the cost-benefit analysis and acts accordingly.
So maybe the solution could be “increase the penalties for workplace injuries/fatalities by a few orders of magnitude, and see how the market reacts”, but maybe at some moment weird things would start happening. Like, if the penalty for workplace fatality is paid to survivors, some workers would choose to sacrifice their life for early retirement of their families. Or new types of crimes would appear, for example assassinations of your competitor’s workers so that it looks like a workplace fatality, and then because of astronomic penalties your competitor goes out of business. More likely, the employers would find some legal loophole, like forcing the workers to technically become self-employed subcontractors, in which case the worker would become legally responsible for his own death, not his de facto employer.
I was surprised by this reduction number—it seems lower than I expected! If you’d asked me by how much the fatality rate in such an industry had fallen 1907–2019, I would’ve predicted a reduction closer to 99% than 90%.
Why is this? What things kill people in this industry today? And why cannot these causes of workplace fatalities be reduced further?
This question seems susceptible to base rate problems.
The linked document in the quote is by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It covers fatal occupational injuries, and according to the graph on page 2, the most common category of fatal injuries, by far, is Transportation incidents, which presumably include car and truck accidents.
And page 3 of the report (with a corresponding table on page 9) compares fatal injuries by select occupations, and has fatality rates for “Structural iron and steel workers” at the same rate as “Driver/sales workers and truck drivers”, and below e.g. Roofers (2x the fatality rate), Aircraft pilots and flight engineers (2.4x the rate), and especially fishing and hunting workers (5.5x the rate).
Unfortunately the report didn’t provide fatality rates for e.g. desk jobs, and I don’t have the energy to look those up. Suffice it to say that once you’ve reached the point where your physically demanding job has a fatality rate on par with fatality rates in car-based professions, it may still be possible to improve, but it probably won’t be easy.
I don’t know the first one, but I am pretty sure the answer to the second one is “because that would make things more expensive”. (Fundamentally, the same reason why all code isn’t unit-tested.) The punishments for workplace fatalities are set externally, the company does the cost-benefit analysis and acts accordingly.
So maybe the solution could be “increase the penalties for workplace injuries/fatalities by a few orders of magnitude, and see how the market reacts”, but maybe at some moment weird things would start happening. Like, if the penalty for workplace fatality is paid to survivors, some workers would choose to sacrifice their life for early retirement of their families. Or new types of crimes would appear, for example assassinations of your competitor’s workers so that it looks like a workplace fatality, and then because of astronomic penalties your competitor goes out of business. More likely, the employers would find some legal loophole, like forcing the workers to technically become self-employed subcontractors, in which case the worker would become legally responsible for his own death, not his de facto employer.