Hi all, Yet ANOTHER post about accident rates, this time with regards to ASR (Accident Severity Rate). Not many people i've spoken with seem to use ASR but i quite like the look of it in that it deals in lost days resulting from accidents, stats which i'm sure my directors would respond well to. Anyway, the IOSH way of doing it seems to be to take the number of days lost during the year, multiply by 1000 and then divide by the total hours worked during the year. The resulting figure supposedly then shows the number of days lost for every 1000 days worked. Here's my question... Would 100,000 not be a better multiplier, given that this figure represents the average number of hours worked by a person in their lifetime? (It's used when calculating Accident FREQUENCY Rates for this very reason). For example, if i used 100,000 as the multiplier for my ASR calculation and this resulted in a company ASR of lets say 20, this would indicate that every employee in the company would have, on average, 20 days off in their working life as a result of an injury/illness at work (just like how an AFR of 2 would indicate that every employee would have 2 RIDDORs during their working life). Or have i COMPLETELY misunderstood the way ASR works!? Many thanks in advance Stern

Hi Kate, Thanks for the reply. I have to disagree slightly however. Whilst admittedly using a multiplier like 100,000 makes the resultant number much more understandable, the 100,000 used in AFR calculations is specifically chosen as this is the approx number of hours someone works in their lifetime. Similarly, the 1,000 used in AIR is usually chosen as it gives a figure per 1,000 employees, which is a something smaller companies can usually identify with (although i know some very small firms even use 100 for their AIR figures). The results are rates which actually tell a story: - An AFR of 2 means that each employee would be expected to sustain 2 RIDDOR reportable accidents during their 100,000hr working life. - An AIR of 2 would suggest 2 RIDDORs per 1,000 employees. Using "random" multipliers would still give a "sensible" number but it wouldn't really MEAN anything in the real world. So far as my original question goes, ASR looks at accident numbers in relation to time (like AFR) rather than in relation to employee numbers (like AIR) and therefore to me it would be much more sensible for it to carry the 100,000 multiplier. Unless of course i've completely missed the way ASR works!? Stern