Posted By SteveD-M Lorenzo I don't think in the grand scale of things there is much difference. It really depends on the assessment of risk on the possible outcome..

Posted By Stuff4blokes Larry, RIDDOR reporting of dangerous occurrences is for significant failures of H&S management and as previously said these are laid down and defined in the regs. HSE may investigate. A near miss in my opinion is something that happens that, but for luck, could have resulted in injury/harm eg a pedestrian and FLT nearly colliding. No injury, no damage but next time could be a fatality. Treated as a learning experience and a trigger for implementing improvements it is a very powerful tool for operational management.

Posted By Tom Doyle Hi Larry, The international standard for machinery risk assessment does not recognize either as being significantly different. BS EN ISO 14121-1:2007 Safety of machinery — Risk assessment — Part 1: Principles Clause 4.2 c) "NOTE An incident that has occurred and resulted in harm can be referred to as an “accident”, whereas an incident that has occurred and that did not result in harm can be referred to as a “near miss” or “dangerous occurrence”." IMO the fact that an event(s) occurred is far more important than what the event is called provided that it triggers some action to prevent a re occurrence which could have a different outcome. I hope this helps. Cheers Tom Doyle Industrial Safety Integration