COSS Accident Investigation Principles 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Under OSHA regulations, how long does an employer have to report a work-related fatality to OSHA?
- 24 hours
- 8 hours (Correct answer)
- 4 hours
- 72 hours
Correct answer: 8 hours
OSHA requires employers to report work-related fatalities within 8 hours of learning about them, either by phone, in person, or via OSHA's online reporting tool.
Question 2: Which of the following BEST describes the concept of 'energy trace and barrier analysis' in accident investigation?
- Auditing electrical energy consumption before an accident
- Identifying the energy source involved and evaluating why barriers failed to control it (Correct answer)
- Measuring energy levels in the environment at the time of the accident
- Tracing the flow of information during emergency response
Correct answer: Identifying the energy source involved and evaluating why barriers failed to control it
Energy trace and barrier analysis identifies the type and flow of energy that caused harm and systematically evaluates why the barriers intended to control that energy failed.
Question 3: An investigator discovers that a worker bypassed a safety interlock to speed up production. To prevent recurrence, which corrective action hierarchy should be applied FIRST?
- Retrain the worker on safety rules
- Discipline the worker for the violation
- Re-engineer the interlock so it cannot be bypassed without shutting down production (Correct answer)
- Add a warning sign near the interlock
Correct answer: Re-engineer the interlock so it cannot be bypassed without shutting down production
The hierarchy of controls prioritizes engineering controls first — redesigning the interlock to be bypass-proof addresses the root cause more reliably than retraining or discipline alone.
Question 4: What does the acronym 'MORT' stand for in the context of accident investigation?
- Management Oversight and Risk Tree (Correct answer)
- Mechanical Operational Review Technique
- Multiple Occurrence Root Trace
- Mandatory Occupational Risk Taxonomy
Correct answer: Management Oversight and Risk Tree
MORT stands for Management Oversight and Risk Tree, a comprehensive analytical logic tree developed by the Department of Energy to evaluate management and oversight factors in accidents.
Question 5: Which type of question should an investigator AVOID when interviewing an accident witness?
- Open-ended questions
- Clarifying questions
- Leading questions (Correct answer)
- Follow-up questions
Correct answer: Leading questions
Leading questions suggest the desired answer, which can contaminate witness recall and produce inaccurate testimony that skews the investigation findings.
Question 6: A 'systemic corrective action' differs from a 'symptomatic corrective action' in that it:
- Addresses the specific injury or illness directly
- Eliminates the surface-level hazard that caused the accident
- Targets the underlying management system failure to prevent a class of accidents (Correct answer)
- Focuses on providing medical treatment for the injured worker
Correct answer: Targets the underlying management system failure to prevent a class of accidents
Systemic corrective actions address the root management system failures, preventing an entire category of similar accidents, while symptomatic actions only fix the immediate surface hazard.
Question 7: Which statistical metric is MOST useful for comparing accident rates between departments or companies of different sizes?
- Total number of recordable incidents per year
- Incidence rate per 100 full-time employees (TRIR) (Correct answer)
- Total hours lost to injury per quarter
- Number of OSHA citations received annually
Correct answer: Incidence rate per 100 full-time employees (TRIR)
The Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) normalizes accident counts per 100 full-time employees, enabling valid comparisons across departments or organizations of varying workforce size.
COSS Accident Investigation Principles 4
Under OSHA regulations, how long does an employer have to report a work-related fatality to OSHA?