Relationship between Unsafe Working Conditions and Workers’ Behavior and Impact of Working Conditions on Injury Severity in U.S. Construction Industry

AbstractUnsafe acts of workers (e.g., misjudgment or inappropriate operation) become the major root causes of construction accidents when they are combined with unsafe working conditions (e.g., work surface conditions or weather) on a construction site. The overarching goal of the research presented in this paper is to explore ways to prevent unsafe acts of workers and reduce the likelihood of construction accidents occurring. The study specifically aims to (1) understand the relationships between human behavior related and working condition related risk factors, (2) identify the significant behavior and condition factors and their impacts on accident types (e.g., struck by/against, caught in/between, falling, shock, inhalation/ingestion/absorption, or respiratory failure) and injury severity (e.g., fatality, hospitalized, or nonhospitalized), and (3) analyze the fundamental accident-injury relationship on how each accident type contributes to the injury severity. The study reviewed 9,358 accidents that o...

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