This study was conducted by three students from Stanford University and UCLA. They collected data on workers’ compensation claims to understand what made them more prevalent. After analyzing almost two decades of documents, they concluded that when the temperature rises, accidents increase. According to their study, on days where the temperature reaches 90 degrees or more, accidents increase by 9%, while when they get to 100 degrees, accidents increase by 15%.
In the past, it had been argued that these statistics were much more common for people who worked outdoors, i.e., farmers and builders. But the study by UCLA and Stanford students proved that this is not the case. People who work indoors, such as in factories, are also at risk on the hottest days.
This occurs because heat has a negative effect on many of the people who experience it. One of the main changes that heat causes is that your ability to make decisions is much more limited. This causes workers to not make correct decisions regarding how they operate machinery, for example. In addition to this, workers also suffer from accidents caused by fatigue and heat sickness.
These types of accidents were believed to be rare because only 850 of them are classified as heat-related accidents. But the study carried out shows the opposite. Analysts realized that there is an increase in accidents that goes hand in hand with the rise in temperature.
The state of California has passed laws that appear to help reduce this number much further. However, analysts seek to understand the problem better to propose additional laws to prevent more accidents caused by hotter days.