ABSTRACT
This chapter presents safety basics to understand subsequent chapters of this book. It covers safety and engineers and product hazard classifications; common mechanical-related injuries and product liability exposure’s common causes; safety management principles, product-safety management program, and product safety organization tasks; accident causation theories; safety performance measuring indexes; safety cost estimation methods; safety cost performance measurement indexes; problems; and references.
The accident causation theories are the Domino theory and the human factors theory. The safety performance measuring indexes include disabling injury frequency rate (DIFR) and disabling injury severity rate (DISR). The cost estimation methods are the Simonds method, the Heinrich method, and the Wallach method. The safety cost performance measurement indexes include average injury cost per profit dollar index, average injury cost per unit turnover index, and average cost per injury index. Also, the chapter presents ten problems to test the reader’s comprehension in the area.
Finally, it is added that the sources of most of the material presented in the chapter are given in its reference section. This will be useful to readers, if they desire to delve more deeply into a specific topic or area.
