We,ve discussed this many times over. IMO it should be Near Hit.

It was a miss and it was nearby. I would imagine the term comes from military engineers or the navy who were ranging weapons.

And of course, it is nearly always the fault of the last worker to actually have contact with the item in question, usually the worker of the lowest rank. It is never the fault of the managers or the management systems.

The saying 'near miss' is a colloqiualism that most people understand. Changing to near hit just confuses people. I believe it stems from the aviation industry classifiying some misses as near and others faraway but I stand to be corrected.

Near-miss:- "an unplanned event which does not cause injury or damage, but could have done so." Examples include: items falling near to personnel from HSE

There are several terms used in safety that can be interpreted to mean/define differentlly to different persons, depending upon context. therefore it is down to individual organisations to have a more explicit meaning of what they use the specific terms for. In our case we have decided that:- Near- Miss: An event without loss or injury i.e. an "event" has occurred, but nobody has been injured and no equipment has been damaged. Injury Accident: An event with injury i.e. someone has been hurt. Incident: An event with a loss, but no injury i.e. an event has occurred and there has been damage to equipment or a spill has gone beyond the point at which the material can be recovered. Potential Hazard: A hazard is identified.

Using ‘miss’ strongly suggests a sense of error or failure? Take any definition from non OSH but erudite commentary and you find: --Something that fails by a very narrow margin. --Any result that is nearly but not quite successful. --An occasion when something almost happens but does not. So not a lot of help there then! Could all be a bit hit and miss if you delve too deeply in my opinion ;-) As has been said, just make sure they understand what you are asking them to report. p48