Division 3.4 Injury scenario: Steps leading to injury(ies)

Most injury scenarios consist of the following three main steps:

1. 1..

   the product has a ‘defect’ or can lead to a ‘dangerous situation’ during its foreseeable lifetime;

2. 2..

   the ‘defect’ or ‘dangerous situation’ results in an accident;

3. 3..

   the accident results in an injury.

These three main steps can be divided into further steps to show how the product hazard can lead to injury and the like. Nevertheless, these ‘steps to injury’ have to be clear and concise, and not exaggerate the detail or the number of steps. With experience, it will be increasingly easier to identify the conditions for the occurrence of any given injury and the ‘shortest path to injury’ (or ‘critical path to injury’).

It is probably easiest to start with a scenario with the consumer for whom the product is intended where the consumer uses the product as per the instructions or, if there are none, according to normal handling and use. If this assessment produces the highest risk level, there is normally no need to carry out further assessments, and appropriate risk reduction measures can be taken. Similarly, where an incident is reported in a specific consumer complaint, a single injury scenario may be sufficient to conclude as to appropriate risk reduction measures.

Otherwise, further scenarios could be developed to include vulnerable consumers, in particular children (see table 1), slight or more pronounced deviations from normal use, use under different climate conditions, such as very cold or very hot, unfavourable conditions of use, such as without proper daylight or illumination, use as suggested when the product was sold (for instance, a lamp sold in a toy shop should also be assessed for its risk when used by a child), use over the entire life-time (including wear and tear), etc. Each scenario should be considered through the entire risk assessment procedure.

Where the product displays several hazards, injury and thus risk scenarios should be developed for each of them. Nevertheless, a plausibility check as to whether an injury scenario might lead to a risk requiring action can limit the number of injury scenarios.

From all the scenarios generated, the scenario providing the highest risk (= ‘the risk’ of the product) will normally be decisive for the risk reduction measures to be taken, because action on the highest risk reduces the risk most effectively. An exception to the rule might be a specific, less-than-highest risk stemming from a different hazard, which could be managed by specific measures and should, of course, also cover the highest risk.

As a rule of thumb, injury scenarios can lead to the highest risk level when:

• the injury(ies) considered are in the highest severity levels (levels 4 or 3);

• the overall probability of an injury scenario is quite high (at least > 1/100).

Table 4 provides further guidance in this respect. This might help to limit the number of scenarios.

Of course, the number of injury scenarios remains the responsibility of the risk assessor, and it depends on the number of factors that need to be taken into account when determining ‘the risk’ of the product. It is therefore impossible to give a specific number of injury scenarios that may be necessary in a specific case.

To help develop a suitable number of scenarios, these guidelines provide a table with typical injury scenarios (table 2). These should be adapted to the specific product, consumer type and other circumstances.