Subsequently, the United States launched the famous ‘safety movement’, and people began to study the causes of accidents and how to prevent them (Fu, 2013). For example, in 1908 the state of New York enacted the Worker Compensation Act (Epstein, 1981). To resolve the conflict between employers and employees on the issue of compensation, certain legal systems concerning workers' compensation have gradually emerged. This has resulted in workers’ compensation for work-related injuries. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution era, human production has undergone major changes, and the mortality rate of workers has increased significantly. In ancient times, the level of education was relatively primitive, and people regarded the occurrence of accidents as God's will. As the most important theoretical foundation and research method of safety science, it is necessary to clarify and expound the development history of accident causation models. This plays an important role in the implementation of post-accident responsibility and the prevention of future accidents. Using an accident cause model to analyse an accident, the various causes of the accident and the shortcomings in the production process can be clearly identified (Ali et al., 2014). Accident causation models clarify the cause, process, and consequences of an accident, to provide a clear analysis of the occurrence and development of the accident. However, improving the safety of systems by reducing accidents remains a challenge for safety scientists (Grant et al., 2018). The goal of safety science is to prevent accidents. (iv) The current accident causation models consist mainly of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, and will develop in the direction of dynamic analysis, accident prediction, and intelligent comprehensive analysis in the future. Accident causation models will develop in a linear and systematic way. (iii) ‘Organisational factors’ will be replaced by more modern ‘safety management systems’, and people will pay more attention to the role of ‘safety culture’ in accident prevention. In an accident analysis, an accident model that meets its industry characteristics should be selected.
(ii) Each type of accident causation model has its own characteristics and application scope. The research findings of this study are as follows: (i) The newly proposed classification method of accident causation models clarifies the classification of accident causes. (vi) This safety also summarises the application status of the accident causal model and prospects for future applications. (v) A comparative analysis of various accident causation models and their development trends are discussed. (iv) A detailed introduction to the 24Model, an accident causation model with theoretical innovation and more modern safety management, is presented. The theoretical basis, application flow, and application status of these models are highlighted. (iii) A review of 29 representative accident causation models proposed in the past 100 years is conducted.
The method divides the accident causal models into linear and nonlinear accident causation models, and the latter are further divided into human-based, statistics-based, energy-based, and system-based accident models. (ii) A new method for classifying accident causation models is proposed. The work conducted in this study is summarised as follows: (i) The role and origin of accident causation models are introduced. To understand accident causation models systematically and comprehensively, this work clarifies the development history of these models over the past 100 years. Accident causation models mainly answer the following two questions: (ⅰ) why does an accident occur, and (ⅱ) how does it occur? These models are the most important theoretical basis for safety science, and provide an important method for accident analysis and prevention.