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The National Institute for Health and Safety at Work (INSST), together with a technical committee made up of representatives from the Ministry of Labour and the Autonomous Communities, has analysed the 572 fatal accidents at work (excluding commuting accidents, traffic accidents and accidents involving covids) that have been studied over the period 2020-2022. In addition to gaining a better understanding of the causes, the aim is to define appropriate measures to prevent any recurrence.
According to the report just published, the 3 main causes are working conditions (configuration, physical agents, etc.), installations and their protective devices, and machinery. Nearly 18% of accidents are due to “the worker remaining in a dangerous area”, the same number to “inadequate working methods” and 15.4% to “failure to identify the risks at the source of the accident”. Individual factors also account for a significant proportion of the causes of accidents at work.
Services (178), construction (168), industry (132) and agriculture (82) are the sectors with the highest number of accidents investigated. Micro enterprises (1-9 workers) and small enterprises (10-49 workers) accounted for 74% of all fatal accidents over the period (36.9% and 37.1% respectively). Workers aged 35-49 and those aged 50 and over were more likely to be victims of fatal accidents. The analysis also shows that 36.3% of the accidents involved workers with one year’s seniority or less, although they represent only 17.3% of the insured population. In terms of contract, 57.5% of the workers who died had permanent contracts and 30.9% had temporary contracts (the rest were not coded).
In conclusion, the INSST considers that the implementation of one or more preventive measures would make it possible to eliminate or control the main causes of fatal accidents. It is concerned that 22.4% of companies “have not even completed the first stage of the process, i.e. the risk assessment” and that only 6.5% have gone as far as adopting preventive measures. “In this sense, the shortcomings of micro-enterprises and the agricultural sector deserve particular attention”.
