On site
What is a near miss?
A near miss is an unplanned event that did not cause injury or damage but had the potential to. Recording them gives a site warning of the accidents that have not happened yet.
Use this diagram+
Free to use on your own site, in training material or in a handout, as long as the credit link stays on it. Paste this where you want the diagram to appear.
<figure>
<img src="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/near-miss/diagram.svg" alt="near miss — diagram from BuildOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
<figcaption>
<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/near-miss">What is a near miss?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk">BuildOptix</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>The event is identical to an accident apart from its outcome, which is often a matter of where somebody happened to be standing. Treating near misses as non-events means waiting for the version with a casualty before anything changes.
Volume is a health indicator in the opposite direction from the intuitive one. A site reporting many near misses usually has a culture where people speak up; a site reporting none has a reporting problem rather than a safety record.
What makes reporting work is the response. Reports that produce a visible change get more reports; reports that disappear into a folder train a workforce to stop bothering within about a month.
What goes wrong in practice
- A blame response to a report, which reliably ends reporting on that site.
- Reports logged with no action and no feedback to the person who raised them.
- Only physical hazards reported, with unsafe sequencing and pressure never captured.