You would have to look at them all for consistencies. Does it mostly happen at the sametime of day, or same day of the week or even month? Is it nearly always the same supervisor on duty? Is there anything about the accident reporting and investigation procedure that upsets the horses? Something that could cause them to take their eye off the ball?

Stevie - in my humble opinion that "classic example" is a dangerous statement to make and I hope that the families dont see it. Unless you can prove it! David

I have often taken the view that accidents are like buses...none and then two or three at once. That said, some years ago there was some internal research (doubt if it was published) in the company I was working for which looked at train driver errors. There was a pattern where drivers coming back to work from leave, a day or weeks, were prone to having an operational error. This trend also followed where drivers had a break ie soon after a lunch or rest break. The problem with this research was finding a solution - you can't stop staff having a holiday! My theory was that drivers were still switched off. Only a few minutes booking on time was provided before a driver picked up a train, whereas office staff might settle back to work by going through their emails, talking to colleagues, making a cuppa, etc. So, this might be an avenue worth investigating, particularly if staff have long periods between working shifts.

I have experianced the same thing in our organisation lastyear, we had an accident free then we had a fatarlity. we hired an expert for the investigation and we came to realise that we had aproblem with reporting. Supervisor's wouldn't let workers report the incident because of escaping the paper work of incident report. or may be they do report but nothing actioned i.e incidents should be communicated in all sector's once they happen.

Statistically, random events do look as if they cluster, rather than being spread evenly across time - in fact, when they are evenly spread a statistician will suspect there is some non-randomness. So I wouldn't read too much into a bit of clustering - you would get this just by chance. Unless, of course, there is some consistent pattern to it such as a relationship with shift rotas. Human nature is to look for patterns and for that reason we are bad at detecting what's random and what's non-random. The classic example of this is to get a computer to put random dots on a screen - when you look at this, you see clusters. But if you ask a human being to put random dots on a piece of paper, we tend to spread them out more evenly - as we interpret clusters as being meaningful even when they are not.

Staggsy, It's very easy to become reactive to this kind of situation as on site management very quickly become uneasy and are no doubt being 'asked questions' from the senior office based management? I also have experienced this kind of flurry of consistent incidents within the oil industry with close knit crews and on a constant 24 hour operational environment. This is where the importance of getting everybody on board to behavioural safety, encouraging all trades to look after each other and not be afraid to speak up there and then! Frank discussions with site mangers is required and not taking eyes off the ball. It's almost as if a full circle has turned and isn't uncommon. Reaction should be proportionate as all too often knee jerk reactions can also backfire with nervous junior members more concerned as to who is watching them than concentrating on their task. Another area I noticed overseas was many more incidents involved senior crew members/supervisors who were concerned in time taken to complete tasks rather than a more methodical pace that the new local crews were comfortable with.