Posted By Paul D Where I'm working management have started to use the stop card system to collect near miss data as they have said this is being under reported and I guess that is the case, however using the stop system in this manner seems wrong to me, as personnel are supposed to remain anonymous, one other thing as a near miss, "is something with the potential to cause harm, but the harm is not realised" then where do you draw the fine line between that and a good catch, e.g. a nut vibrates off a bolt and drops onto a walkway 3ft below, but the walkway is 60ft up, the bolt has not fallen out of the bolt hole and both the nut and bolt are found by someone doing an inspection of that area, is this a good catch or a near miss, another example, is a small drip or leak which is seen coming from a piece of equipment and immediately spotted by a worker, the job is stopped and the leak is repaired, no one slips on the small patch of oil, the machine had not started doing anything it should not do, is this a near miss or a good catch, I know everyones perception is different, however as a safety advisor I'm finding it hard to see where the common sense has gone to, I will hold my hand up and be the first to admit I was wrong, but I feel that we are going down the wrong road with this, can anyone enlighten me please am I wrong or is this a grey area.

Posted By Paul D Amendment to the nut and bolt saga, I was misinformed, the nut did not vibrate loose off the bolt, the bolt sheared in half and both ends remained in the clamp, if one or both of the ends had fallen they would have landed on the walkway 3ft below as previously mentioned.

Posted By Thos G A simplistic tree of unwanted events are - injury and/or damage - accidents - near misses - unsafe acts/conditions. In terms of occupational HS if you reduce the unsafe acts/conditions then the potential for the more adverse outcomes must reduce. The 'STOP' system is new on me. I must admit that on reading the post or hearing the term I would have assumed that we awere looking at some sort of 'Prohibition System'. Regards Tom

Posted By Robert K Lewis One can rationally argue however that 96%+ near misses are either unsafe acts or unsafe conditions however and thus the use of STOP is applicable to the Near Miss reporting to a major degree. Think about the reasoning around why and how the nut became dislodged/free Bob

Posted By GARRY WIZZ had STOP at a previous company. It was able in conjunction with other stratergies to get everyone on site actively involved with safety. So I considered it very very useful and any down sides did not out weight the positive. Garry