In brief

  • Lost time injuries and fatalities tell you what has already gone wrong. Near misses tell you what is about to.
  • Most close calls on Australian sites are never reported, because they are inconvenient, embarrassing or simply not noticed.
  • Some near misses are legally notifiable. At New South Wales mines, for example, a collision involving a vehicle or mobile plant is a dangerous incident, and high potential incidents must be reported within 7 days.
  • Automated detection can capture close calls that people miss, turning them into data that helps safety teams fix problems before someone is hurt.

At NSW mines, high potential incidents must be reported within 7 days, and records kept for 7 years.

NSW Resources Regulator, Guide: Notification of incident and injury

Ask any experienced safety professional and they will tell you that serious incidents rarely come out of nowhere. They are usually preceded by a pattern of smaller events: the forklift that nearly clipped a picker, the operator who reached past a guard, the light vehicle that cut across a haul road. Each one was a warning. Most were never written down.

This article looks at why near misses matter, what Australian law expects, and how mining, manufacturing and warehousing operations can build a reliable flow of leading indicator data.

Lagging and leading indicators

Lagging indicators measure harm after it happens: injury rates, lost time, workers compensation claims and fatalities. They matter, but they arrive too late to prevent the event they record. Safe Work Australia reports 188 worker deaths and 146,700 serious workers compensation claims in its latest national figures. Every one of those numbers is a lagging indicator.

Leading indicators measure the conditions and behaviours that come before harm: near misses, unsafe acts, control failures, overdue inspections and the quality of safety conversations. They give managers time to act. The challenge is that leading indicators depend on people noticing and reporting events, and that is where most systems break down.

Why near misses go unreported

  • Nobody was hurt. Workers often see a close call as a non-event.
  • Fear of blame. Operators worry that reporting a near miss will count against them.
  • Paperwork. If reporting takes twenty minutes at the end of a long shift, it will not happen.
  • No feedback. When reports disappear without visible action, people stop making them.
  • Nobody saw it. Many close calls happen in blind spots, on night shift or in remote areas with no witness at all.

When a near miss is a legal obligation

Some near misses are not optional to report. Under the model Work Health and Safety Act, dangerous incidents must be notified to the regulator immediately, and the site must be preserved. At New South Wales mines, the Resources Regulator’s notification guide lists a collision involving a vehicle or mobile plant, and the unintended activation, movement or failure to stop of vehicles or machinery, among the dangerous incidents that must be reported. Written notice is required within 48 hours, high potential incidents must be reported within 7 days, and records must be kept for 7 years. Queensland mines have similar duties for serious accidents and high potential incidents under their own mining safety laws.

For operators, this creates a practical question. If a monitoring system records a close call between a vehicle and a person, someone needs to review it promptly and decide whether a notification is required.

Building a near-miss system that works

Strong near-miss systems share a few habits, and they come as much from culture as from technology. Dainu Devis, CEO of Sharktech Global, spent more than seven years across the NBN rollout and Telstra critical infrastructure, including as Area Manager for Telstra critical infrastructure facilities in New South Wales, through Ventia on the Telstra InfraCo contract (2021 to 2025). Across more than 2,200 sites, that portfolio recorded zero health, safety and environment incidents. Sustaining a record like that depends on treating every close call as information rather than as a failure, and on closing the loop so crews see that reports lead to action. Read more about Dainu’s background.

In practice, that means:

  1. Make reporting fast. A report should take less than two minutes, ideally from a phone.
  2. Make it blame-free. Leaders must be seen to thank people for reporting, not question them.
  3. Close the loop. Share what changed because of a report, at the next pre-start or toolbox talk.
  4. Classify by potential, not outcome. A near miss that could have killed someone deserves the same attention as an injury.
  5. Review trends monthly. Look for repeat locations, times, tasks and equipment.

The solution: how Flagman captures the close calls people miss

Even the best reporting culture cannot capture events nobody sees. This is where camera-based AI adds something genuinely new. Platforms such as Flagman monitor defined danger zones continuously, around forklifts, machines, conveyors and vehicle areas, and record every time a person enters one. Each event is logged with time-stamped video and can be reviewed on a central dashboard.

Across mining, manufacturing and warehousing, that data answers questions that are otherwise guesswork:

  • Which forklift, aisle or dock has the most pedestrian interactions?
  • Which machine has the most hand intrusions, and on which shift?
  • Where are people approaching running conveyors?
  • Are interactions falling after a layout change, or simply moving somewhere else?

Automated data does not replace human reporting. It complements it, by capturing the events people miss and giving safety teams an objective baseline. It also needs governance: clear rules about who reviews events, how quickly potential notifiable incidents are escalated, how footage is protected as evidence, and how worker privacy is respected.

Turning data into decisions

Near-miss data only creates value when it changes something on the ground. The most useful monthly review asks three questions. Where are the repeat hot spots? Which control in the hierarchy would remove the risk at its source? And did last month’s changes actually reduce interactions? Boards and executives increasingly expect to see this kind of evidence, because it demonstrates the due diligence that officers are required to exercise under work health and safety law.

The outcome you can measure

The outcome is a reliable stream of leading indicator data across mining, manufacturing and warehousing operations. Flagman records the close calls that would otherwise go unseen, gives safety teams a baseline to measure improvement against, and supports prompt review of events that may need to be notified. Leaders can then report on prevention, not just injuries, and show the due diligence that work health and safety law expects of officers.

Key takeaways

Near misses are the earliest and cheapest warning a business will ever get. Capturing them takes a blame-free culture, simple reporting and, increasingly, automated detection that sees what people cannot. Operations that measure close calls consistently are far better placed to prevent the serious incidents that lagging indicators only record after the fact.

Next step

Want to see how many close calls are happening on your site today? Request a Flagman safety assessment and establish a baseline. In Australia, Flagman is delivered and supported locally by Sharktech Global.

Sources: NSW Resources Regulator, Guide: Notification of incident and injury; Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2025; model Work Health and Safety Act 2011, sections 27 and 35 to 39. This article is general information, not legal or safety advice for your site.