ABSTRACT
The Bird accident ratio can be a useful tool in tracking safety performance by comparing the number of near misses reported to the number represented by the accident ratio. The inclusion of minor incidents and near misses greatly increases the database for safety performance tracking. This is general practice in most industries, but it is not yet utilised in the fertiliser industry in South Africa. Literature has shown that Bird’s ratio cannot be applied universally. Bird’s research is outdated by several decades and spanned many industries with different inherent risks. As the industries all had different definitions for incident classification, Bird’s accident ratio relied heavily on his own discretion. The accident ratio for a fertiliser manufacturing facility in South Africa was determined as 1:8:28:55 and differed slightly from Bird’s ratio of 1:10:30:600. The study determined that up to 76% of near misses are not reported at the fertiliser manufacturing facility.
