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Posted By BS
I am looking at carrying out my dissertation on the cost of life.
For example
Exactly what price can you put on a life?
Is it higher for a smaller company?
I have reason to believe that the HSE currently say £1,000,000
Does anyone have any comments?
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Posted By NeilM Poyznts-Powell
The moral starting point, I suppose, is that human life is irreplaceable.
However, attempting to put a value on a individual life would have to be done be on an individual basis. Civil courts try to do this regularly and have to take into account the current and future circumstances of the individual concerned. This approach inevitably leads to the value of life been based on the wealth gaining potential of the person in life. Is Richard Bransons life worth more than a labourers? Morally, definatley not. Financially, yes!
Would the value of compensation for a work related death be the same in the UK as the third world? The apparent lower value placed on life and limb in some countries has been noted as a cause for concern in the globalisation argument.
Good luck.
Regards,
Neil
Very good research topic!
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Posted By Paul Devlin
I think you may find that the cost of life is about £18,000 which is the average fine for a fatality in the workplace. This falls quite a bit short of figure you from HSE.
I did this as a report as part of my TUC Occupational Health and Safety Course. Couple of years back but there wont be much difference in the last couple of years to now.
Now if you mean compensation thats a different thing and the HSE certainly dont award compensation payouts so they can qoute whatever figure they want, hell why not £10m. As was mentioned can you really put a price in a life?
Cheers
Paul
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Posted By NeilM Poyznts-Powell
Hi Again,
Just a thought. You would need to closely define "value" i.e. just per head financial value, value to society in general (taking into account affect on family and friends and incidental financial costs such as future social needs of the family).
Again a very interesting choice, if I were you I would be asking if this was PhD worthy as a research topic!
Best of Luck.
Neil
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Posted By BS
I was thinking along the idea of the following scenario
it costs £700 for a MEWP for the day needed for roof repairs.
A large company can absorb this cost??
Does the self employed take a short cut and risk life??
Therefore the cost of life is £700
Is the large company thinking of the welfare of employees or more worried about litigation?
These are my initial thoughts, I do realise I need to be quite specific in my area of investigation in order for this to have any value to it
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Posted By Paul Devlin
What you might be better doing is looking at the compensation figures that have been paid out over the last few years and then take an average to give you a ball park figure.
You might even want to give different examples after it with say the HSE, CITB, TUC etc idea of the value of human life and the reasoning behind why these bodies set such a figure?
Then when you finish it can I buy it from you for my dissertation??
If my tutors happen to read this that was a joke??
Paul
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Posted By NeilM Poyznts-Powell
I believe the courts use sentencing guidelines/tables to work out sentencing tariffs. These do factor in the defendants ability to pay. It may be worth getting hold of these, not sure where from.
HSE have an introduction on their web site:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/en...t/sentencing/factors.htm
Regards,
Neil
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Posted By Jay Joshi
My understanding of the term "Cost of life" in a health and safety context is about decision making in high hazard risk assessments and cost benefit analysis of investing/spending finacial resources ( generally for safety improvements) to "save a life"--hence the term the value of life.
If you base the value of life on enforcement criteria such as average fines for a fatality or sentancing guidelines, that is a completely different issue, but something you may include in your dissertation about the perception various people have regarding even putting a numerical value on a life!
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Posted By NeilM Poyznts-Powell
Following on from previous comments.
There is information available about corporate decission making based on cost of improvements. A case that I vaguely have knowledge of regards a car maker deciding not to install air bag technology in cars (1970/80's) as financial cost of implimenation vastly outweighed cost of allowing risk to exist without the control.
(P.S. Ford or GM!)
Regards,
Neil
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Posted By Alan Haynes
I think what you are after is 'the value of preventing a fatality' - i.e, what one would spend to save a life - a figure you would use in deciding whether an 'investment' to save life is 'worth doing'
Unfortunately, this VOPF varies, The figure used in Highway schemes is significantly less than, for instance, that used in Railway schemes, [where it can run into many £millions per life].
I have never understood why highways were lower - except that they couldn't afford the railway figure [no more pedestrian crossings - have a nice footbridge instead], and railways don't use the highway numbers as no significant safety expenditure would ever be justified at the lower figures.[And the public don't see themselves paying for railway safety - they do though for local authority safety expenditure.
Good luck with the paper
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Posted By Jay Joshi
Whether we like it or not, decsion makers, especially when involved in public-policy decision making, such as upgrading roads to dual carriagways/motorways, enhancing safety in nuclear and other high hazard industries(petroleum refining/petrochemical and the like) do have to undertake cost-benefit analysis based on the so called "value of life" and depending upon the number of theoretical lives that can be saved(or fatalities prevented) is a part of the decision making.
Therefore in context of the societal risk, the value of life is far greater!
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Posted By BS
on that note I beleive when constructing the Euro tunnel there was an anticipated 16 fatalities.
By completion there was 8 fatalities which would suggest the the project had been a success.
has anyone heard of this or know of any facts surrounding this.
I have no evidence of the above other than "a bloke down the pub told me" (which I really don't feel is credible).
Can anyone advise?
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Posted By Ian G Hutchings
Have a look at www.rssb.co.uk the RSSB (Rail Safety & Standards Board) in the research projects under safety decision making and also as mentioned by Alan Haynes the VPF calculations.
A great deal of work and research is going on in this area and between the rail and highways under the DoT. The past variance was about £1 million on the roads and £3 million on the railway.
Ian
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Posted By Kieran J Duignan
BS
A practical difficulty in replying to your question is that you don't indicate the context of the dissertation for which you are carrying out research, or the methods of research you're able and willing to use.
If you are using desk and library research as the main methods, a comparison of awards for loss of life in different countries would offer fair scope for exploration of the assumptions and implications
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Posted By Bob Thompson CMIOSH
it may also be usefull to look at insurers stance on this as I understand that a VOL or value of life calculation is included within premiums for example joe bloggs megga rich engineering multi sited loadsa employees may not incur increase in premiums until x amount of fatalities or carnage has been incured.
discuss
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Posted By Raymond Rapp
BS
You may wish to spice up your dissy with an unusual case: R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273 - where the life of a cabin boy was held was held to have the value not less valuable than than the lives of two adults who could prolong their existence by eating him!
On a more serious note, some years ago whilst trawling through some documents I noticed that my employer (railway operator) valued the life of a member of the public at £1M, whereas an employee was valued at £100K. So much for CBA?
Regards
Ray
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Posted By Andy Brazier
A number of posts are touching on the subject of societal risk. My understanding of this complex subject is that it factors in societies perception of events. This explains why more is spent on railways than highways because rail accidents tend to kill many people (which is perceived very badly) whilst road accidents kill few (which is perceived less bad although it happens far more often). In fact the point has been made in recent years that following train crashes, people move from rail to road and thus put themselves at higher risk. From this you can conclude that if train ticket prices go up to cover enhanced safety people are more likely to take the car. Trains may be safer but risk to society has gone up.
Andy
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Posted By BS
Thanks to everyone who has inputed to this thread.
I certainly have plenty to be thinking about.
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Posted By Ashley Wood
I was told recently that the government takes a view that the compensation cost of a life is £1.4 million. This is based on a risk assessment that was done recently to evaluate the cost of a fire within a road tunnel on the M25. They look at this figure and then at the cost of the works to make a tunnel safer verses the likely hood of an incident taking place against the volume of traffic using the tunnel. It is understood that the likely hood of a fire in the tunnel in question was one in 600 years! what the do not say is when in that 600 year period the fire will take place, so it could be tomorrow! Statistics are dangerous things. Did you no that statistics show that the person who lives longest has the most birthdays!
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Posted By Adrian Watson
Dear All,
The CDM Regulatory Risk assessment states "HSE publishes monetary appraisal values for use when evaluating policies. The values used are: fatal injuries £1,399,252, major injuries £37,175, over three day injuries £5,288, minor injuries £321 and incidences of ill-health, £7,372. Unit costs are in 2004/05 prices."
Regards Adrian Watson
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Posted By Ian Waldram
HSE webpage, already quoted above, covers this issue under the heading of ALARP. There is a specific paper on cost-benefit analysis, including how to take account of the need for 'gross disproportion' and also incidents with multiple fatalities, neither of which have been mentioned to date.
A key point in CBA calculations is that they are done on the basis of a 'statistical life' - for example someone who spends all their working hours exposed to a particular risk. This partly explains why using court compensation data, which is based on the specific circumstances of a particular person, isn't the best approach.
The same paper has an interesting example to show how much it might be sensible to spend if a particular risk could be completely eleiminated. This gives an upper bound, provided there is good data to demonstrate what the event frequency actually is.
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Posted By Tony Brunskill
Ashley, What if they were born on Feb 29?
Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
Tony
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Posted By Merv Newman
Just going back to the channel tunnel comment.
Yes, there were seven lives lost. All on the British side. The French had zero. HSE shut down the British side and told them to get some safety advice. They called in consultants (I know who they were and they were not "tunnelling" experts) who gave management a severe kicking and things got better.
However, can you bring to mind the original photo of the "meeting" between the two sides ? The French were in full personal protective equipment. The Brits had hard hats, jeans, and tee-shirts. This photo was later re-shot so as to be more "correct"
Merv
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Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Merv appears to (again) put his finger on a vital element of effective risk management.
Merv
While you may wish not to indicate the identity of the more effective safety consultants, would you be so kind as to indicate what they brought to the party that made a vital difference.
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Posted By paul cormack
Good answers, probably wrong question.
The question, perhaps, should be "what is the cost of a fatality". Ian Hutchings provided a good indication of the source of official costings.
Industry (on both sides of the Atlantic) use a million, i.e. $1M or £1M. It appears it's twice as much over here (considering exchange rates).
You need to consider direct costs resulting from compensation to the family, loss of productivity (at site), legal (and perhaps, court) costs, incident investigation costs (including management costs associated with review), counselling costs (for staff and management), etc.
Separately, there are the indirect costs of prosecution, reputational costs, captital equipment or procedure costs, recruitment, etc.
£1 million is wiped off your balance sheet in a heartbeat.
Hope this helps/Paul
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