Principal challenges in preventing accidents Principal challenges in preventing accidents

Because resources for accident prevention are very limited, they must be channelled to where the loss of health and wellbeing is the greatest.

There are good sets of basic data available in Finland to study, with a high degree of reliability, fatal accidents and accidents requiring hospitalisation. The incidence of accidents requiring hospitalisation is certainly a good indicator of the incidence of serious accidents in general.

However, hospitalisation is not a sufficient criterion for determining what is a serious accident. The number of accidents says nothing about their long-term consequences.

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