Enhancing Workers' Vigilance to Electrical Hazards through a Virtually Simulated Accident

Abstract

Electrocution is one of the major causes of fatalities in the construction industry. Despite periodic safety training aimed at retaining workers' vigilance (i.e., sustained attention) to electrical hazards, workers tend to fail to maintain vigilance toward frequent encounters with electrical hazards. Providing an effective intervention that restores workers' vigilance is thus critical to reducing electrocution accidents. To this end, this study proposes a Virtual Reality (VR) safety training environment that exposes workers to repeated electrical hazards and simulates an electrocution accident when workers come in contact with the hazards. A pilot experiment was conducted, and participants' vigilance (i.e., eye fixations on the hazard) was measured using eye-tracking sensors. The results reveal the potential effect of experiencing VR-simulated electrocution on enhancing workers' vigilance to electrical hazards. The outcomes of this study will lay the foundation for further studies to employ VR as a safety training environment that allows workers to experience a simulated electrocution, thereby contributing to a potential reduction in fatal electrocutions.