Purely Co-accidental

From 150 factories in the Detroit area, 1,028 foremen and supervisors went to a new kind of accident-prevention school last week. Its theory: some men are more prone to industrial accidents than others, and the way to prevent plant accidents is to cull these men out.

This theory was developed by the manager of Detroit's Industrial Safety Council, big, hard-working Clarence Wormuth. Six years ago he persuaded 16 Michigan police commissioners to keep cards showing name, address, employer of everyone involved in a traffic accident. Over a five-year period, this amazing fact emerged: seven-tenths of 1% of all drivers were responsible for 27% of all accidents.

To safety supervisors of 100 cooperating industrial plants, Clarence Wormuth sent these results, had them checked against the traffic offenders' industrial safety records. In almost every case the man with a bad driving record had a bad plant-accident record too.

So Clarence Wormuth started a double-purposed safety campaign. When a worker is involved in a traffic mishap, the plant safety supervisor checks his plant record, if it is bad calls him in for an interview. After his aptitudes and temperament are determined, he is put in a job that better suits him. "Accident-prone" workers are segregated, placed on nonhazardous work.

One Packard employe had nine traffic and 14 plant accidents in five years. The foreman found him a hothead who liked to ram drivers he saw violating traffic regulations, a fast worker with excess time for practical jokes (which often backfired). Switched to a responsible maintenance position, his traffic and plant accident scores dropped abruptly.

The 1,028 straw bosses who went to Wormuth's emergency school last week will learn how to recognize "accident-prone" employes, especially among the thousands of green hands going into war industries.

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