Question

You might be surprised to know that each year vending machines kill more people in the USA (on average) than sharks do. Identify three different possible “accident” scenarios with vending machines and apply risk assessment criteria. Define the accident, state and defend your choice for severity and occurrence of each accident.

Answer 1

Sol.

Three different possible "accident" scenarios with vending machines could be as following:

1. Products pop up and hit the person at his forehead.- This may happen due to some small malfunction in the release box of product. Products with harder packings like cold drink, products packed in tin containers etc can cause severe injuries.
2. Vending machine falls over the person - Vending machine, more in hight having its centre of gravity above half the hight are more susceptible to fall over the person using it or supplier's person for its maintenance. It is more likely during heavy wind velocity from opposite direction. Some times if vending machine is vigorously rocked it may deliver products like cold drink or soda. In the process of rocking by some naughty boys, it may fall on them and they can get crushed under the machine.
3. Vending machine grabs the hand of the person using it - While collecting the product sometimes if person does not move out his hand in time, then his finger, palm or fore arm may be grabbed by vending machine. People who are thinking about something else while using vending machine, their chances of getting grabbed is high.

The above three possible accident scenarios are further scenarios with the help of Risk Assessment Matrix given below.

	Consequences / Severity
Likely hood	Insignificant	Minor	Moderate	Major	Critical
Rare
Unlikely					2
Possible			1
Likely				3
Almost Certain

In my opinion, above three cases can be fit in the above matrix as shown above. Severity level increases from lowest to highest when we move from upper left corner of above matrix to bottom right corner.