Analyzing the impact that lack of supervision has on safety culture and accident rates as a proactive approach to curbing the South African railway industry’s high incident occurrence rate

Abstract

An internal summary of the findings from the 2014–15 final investigations reports highlighted that the human factor element contributed to 71 % of the occurrences recorded in that year. Of these recorded human factor related contributions, 32 % were attributed to the category, lack of supervision (the largest contributing category), as having had either a direct or indirect effect on the recorded occurrences. The findings of the summary indicated that while there were procedures in place with the intent of managing safety, these procedures were not successfully executed due to a lack of supervision. This paper proposes that a lack of supervision could be understood as contributing to an ineffective safety culture because a supervisor plays a vital safety role in reinforcing proper procedures and work practices to correct systemic weaknesses. This study suggests that the failures in supervision noted indicate an ineffective safety culture within the South African Railway Industry that may potentially increase accident occurrence rates.