Correlation between accidents and a person's attitude

Some social scientists believe that accidents may reflect a person’s attitude towards life. They reason that frequent accidents are symptomatic of inadequate social adjustment. They state that as one’s person sense of social responsibility increases, the potential for accidents decreases correspondingly. The assumption is that as one lives by the internalized set of rules which govern one’s behavior in all activities. The more these rules reflect social irresponsibility the more likely it is that the individual will suffer an accident. This is quite relevant to the Kenyan Situation where both the government and the citizens don’t seem to care about fire safety management until when fires disasters occur.

Suchman theorized that rejection of social constraints leads to a higher incidence of accident injuries. He studied more than 1,500 high school and college students through personal interviews and written questionnaires. A significant relationship was found between accidents and characteristics commonly associated with social deviance. He reasoned that behavioral activities  such as fighting and cheating on tests represented an attitude of social irresponsibility and could cause a person to be a high-risk candidate for accidental occurrences. (See figure below).

Source: Suchman, 1994.