PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25902, 7 September 1949, Page 4

PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS

“GREATEST EPIDEMIC OF PRESENT DAY ”

The Department of Health and the Plunket Society have been active in the last few years with advice on the prevention of accidents in the home, the recently-formed industrial hygiene division of the department has been working for a reduction in the number of accidents in industry, and the Transport Department and local authorities have issued many warnings about traffic accidents.

All the propaganda about accidents is not peculiar to New Zealand. Throughout the world there is an awareness that a great many accidents in the home, in the factory, and on the road can be prevented, and education designed, to achieve this prevention is taking place everywhere. A Christchurch doctor yesterday, discussing accidents, said: “Accidents are the greatest epidemic of the present day.”

Even in periods of active fighting during the last war accidents contributed a large proportion of the tptal hospital cases. Figures published by the War Office show that in the Middle East campaigns of May to June, 1942. October to November. 1942. and the North African campaign of December, 1942 to January. 1943, battle injuries not caused directly by enemy action accounted for 30 to 55 per cent, of the total casualties. Accidents accounted for about half the total fractures, and about threequarters of the total number of burns.

A recent issue of the “Medical Officer,” a British journal.’ mentions a study in America and says the whole study rests on the assumption that what are called accidents arc not so in the strict sense, but the outcome of factors which are predictable.

“We are continually within an inch or a second of disaster, but escape by the rapidity and efficiency of our actions.” the article says. “The study of this phenomenon—efficiency testing —has reached a fair state of development and from it many important facts have emerged. One is that all of us have permanent errors of ' reaction. Usually we are not conscious of them, but learn unconsciously to allow for them. Those who cannot do so or are not conscious of them are recognised as ‘accident-prone/ ” “It is common knowledge that in driving a car ‘one for the road’ may be one for the mortuary if not for the police court: but it is less commonly recognised that anything which is consciously or subconsciously annoying us interferes with reaction and increases our proneness to accident.”