ACCIDENT PROOF?

Evening Star, Issue 20373, 3 January 1930, Page 11

ACCIDENT PROOF?

HOW TO FIND OUT Are you liable to accidents? You can find this out by submitting to a series of “ seslhetokinetic ” tests described in a report by Eric Farmer and B. G Chambers, and published by the Industrial Health Research Board. There are thirteen tests in all, and they include: Dot a series of small circles passing at an increasing speed. Follow the irregular movements of a mechanically-controlled pointer. Keep a green disc controlled by two handles above a white moving disc. _ Keep a styllus with a ball on the end inside a small metal cup without touching the sides, the cup being moved in an irregular way. Form a rectangle out of a four pieces of differently-shaped metal. Fit strips of metal of varying length into a frame. Build a cube from twenty-seven bricks so that each side of the cube is of different colour. The subjects tested were 1,800 apprentices in the workshops of certain Naval and Royal Air Force establishments. According to the authors, states the introduction, there is now reason to believe that these tests do actually measure some factor in accident proneness. “As an illustration of the eventual practical possibilities of tests for selective purposes when further knowledge has been gained, it may be pointed out that in these groups the accident rate of the worst 25 per cent, was about two and a-half times as great as that of the rcmaniing 75 per cent,” Some evidence was adduced to show that industrial proficiency was associated with low accident rate, and that the common factors in this association were to some extent measured by the tests.