Early in the morning or late at night, the call could come at any time for Mike Riffe, a seasoned accident investigator with Oregon OSHA. He has handled more than 250 accidents through the years, documenting the scene, analyzing machinery, recreating incidents, and interviewing employees, employers, and other witnesses to make sense of what went wrong.
Most serious workplace accidents – accidents that happen infrequently but have catastrophic outcomes – are the result of a series of seemingly unrelated events, rarely perceived and never controlled or constrained. Such events persist as part of an organization's daily activities until someone makes a "mistake" – a subtle label for "operator error" or "human error" and the result is a fatality or catastrophe.
A vehicle service technician who worked for an emergency medical response company was cleaning and preparing an ambulance for the next shift.
Q: I teach a workplace safety course at a community college. Increasingly, the issue comes up in class about what a young person can do to advocate safer working conditions.
Company: Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services
Ombudsman for Injured Workers: Jennifer Flood