Posted By Andy Petrie We have a standard value to be used in our risk assessments for the cost of a life, I was wondering if anyone has a cost of a major injury figure. I am keen to know this because I am aware of cases where the payout for a major injury is much more than if a fatality occured (due to possible long term care costs, distress etc.) When carrying out a risk assessment we assume 1 fatality is equivalent to 10 major injuries, but there is a lot of debate as to how to deal with this. Anybody's experience in this area would be more than welcome. Andy

Posted By Merv Newman Research, which I can quote, has shown that there is no way of calculating the cost of a specific injury or incident. There are too many variables, estimations and unknowns. About 10 years ago the French social security system calculated that an injury resulting in permanent disability (will never work again) would cost the employer about £60 000 in medical fees and disability pension (which, here, are biiled back to the employer) Which seems quite cheap, actually. A number of companies use a sort of "actuarial" or notional figure to keep track of average injury costs. The minimum seems to come out at £3 000 just for having someone off work plus about £600 per lost day. This is usually stated as"direct costs" with "indirect costs" quoted as being from 3 to 5 times the direct. There is a lot of detail in all this, maybe some of our more up-to-date colleagues will supply the details.