Industrial accidents are produced by social relations work. This sociological explanation of accidents differs from the hypotheses on which the majority of modern safety practices are based, which reduce accident causes to unsafe acts and unsafe conditions. Accidents are seen as produced at each of three levels of social relations of work (rewards, command and organisation), and also non-socially at the individual-member level. The resulting hypotheses were tested using data collected according to a semi-experimental design in seven plants in which shift (day/night), shift type (rotating/fixed), technological type and management styles were the factors controlled for. Because of the design, machines, materials and, in most cases, workers were the same across shifts and social relations varied. 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