Accident investigation principles and methods

Accident Investigation O1

It is an unfortunate fact that accidents affect young children within their own homes everywhere in the world, and if the adults had taken a mite more care and acted more responsibly, countless number of lives would have been saved, and quite a few instances of injury involving small children could have been prevented. In the United Kingdom alone, it is reported that about 320 children under the age of fourteen died of home-related accidents, mainly by poisoning and injuries due to various other reasons, in the year 2002. This is a figure that shows that more children die due to home-related accidents than of fatal diseases like leukemia and meningitis. These are the types of accidents that may occur to a child within the home: a fall or a trip, either at the same level, or from one level to another. Burns and scalds was another major risk within the home, and either hot drinks or fires caused most of these accidents. Poisoning was another important cause for the death of small children, and this is something that can be easily prevented with the minimum amount of safety measures. (How Many Children are injured in Accidents?)

Let us take the case of a child being injured by a fall from the top of a staircase. What can happen to a toddler who has been involved in a fall? He can either be injured fatally, especially if the fall was from one level to another, as it happened in this particular case, or he may suffer minor bruises from the fall. The accident could have been easily prevented if the parent or the adult had: not left the child unattended even for an instant near the staircase. It is a fact that a toddler has no sense of the danger that he is putting himself into when he attempts to climb up a flight of stairs, and neither does he possess a sense of balance that will keep him safe while he is climbing up or even hoisting himself up with the help of the banisters. Therefore, an adult will have to be with the child when he is near a staircase, or there will be an accidental fall that may result in brain damage due to head injuries, or in limbs being broken or in severe bruising.

The best way to prevent a staircase becoming accessible to a child would be to install a safety gateway at the entrance to the child's room so that he may not be able to reach the stairs at all. In case this is not possible, then the stairway must be kept clear of all dangers, like for example, a clutter of toys or shoes on which a child may trip and fall. The carpeting on the staircase must be fixed properly so that there are no loose threads or pieces hanging out. A guard must be fixed on the spaces between the banisters in order to prevent the child from falling out from between the spaces. In addition, hardware mounted safety gates can be mounted at the top and at the bottom of the staircase so that it will remain an out of reach place for the child. Pressure mounted or accordion gates must be however, avoided, because while pressure gates are not very safe, accordion gates may end up entrapping a small child's head within its gaps.

The best safety measure of all is to warn the child and educate him about the various dangers that are involved in the misuse of a staircase, and he must be taught at a very early age to learn to use the staircase in the proper and safe manner that would prevent accidents and injuries of any sort. The best method in which to bring this about would be to teach the child, at the early age of about 10 to 12 months, to walk down the staircase backwards. If there is a window at the landing of the staircase, then the window must be barred and childproofed. It is a fact that merely installing window screens is not at all a good safety measure; a window guard must be installed if the child is to be safe from falls and accidents on the stairs. If this were not possible, then the window must be kept securely fastened at all times, because small children can fall out of a window that has been opened just a mere five inches or 21.7 centimeters.