Not every injury is equal. Some are treated and forgotten in an afternoon. Others take a person off the job for weeks, or force them into a different role while they heal. The DART rate zooms in on those more serious cases.
Type your DART cases and total hours into the calculator below to get your rate.
What does DART stand for?
DART means Days Away, Restricted or Transferred. It counts the work-related injuries and illnesses where a person had to be away from work, had to do restricted work, or was moved to another job because of the injury.
It is a close cousin of the total recordable rate, but it leaves out the cases that only needed medical treatment and where the person carried on with normal duties.
What cases are included?
- Days away: the person could not work for at least one day after the injury day.
- Restricted work: the person could work, but could not do all of their usual tasks.
- Job transfer: the person was moved to a different job while they recovered.
A worker who gets stitches and goes straight back to normal duties is a recordable case, but not a DART case.
The DART rate formula
DART rate = (Number of DART cases x 200,000) / Total hours worked
As with the OSHA incident rate, 200,000 hours stands for 100 full-time workers over a year. The result tells you how many DART cases you had per 100 workers.
Worked example
A distribution centre had 5 DART cases in a year. Its team worked 420,000 hours.
DART rate = (5 x 200,000) / 420,000 = 1,000,000 / 420,000 = 2.38
If the same centre had 2 DART cases the next year over 430,000 hours, the rate falls to 0.93. That is a strong sign that serious injuries are being prevented or managed better.
DART rate vs total recordable rate
The two answer different questions. The total recordable rate asks, how often do people get hurt? DART asks, how often are people hurt badly enough that work is affected?
If your recordable rate is high but your DART rate is low, you probably have many minor injuries that need treatment. If both are high, injuries are frequent and serious. You can calculate the first with our incident rate calculator.
Why do clients ask for it?
Some clients and insurers look at DART because it is closely tied to cost and lost productivity. A DART case means someone is missing from their normal role, and that costs money. A low DART rate suggests that serious injuries are rare on your site.
Be careful with restricted duty
Light duty can help a person recover faster, and it is often the right call. But it should be used for the worker’s benefit, not just to keep the days-away number low. If cases are being moved from days away to restricted work only for the look of the figures, your data stops being honest. DART includes both, which makes this harder to do.
Common mistakes
- Leaving out restricted work or transfer cases
- Counting medical-treatment-only cases as DART
- Using total employees instead of hours worked
- Forgetting contractor hours
- Calculating over a very short period and reading too much into it
For a view that includes how long people were away, add the severity rate calculator.
Example: comparing two shifts
A plant runs a day shift and a night shift. The day shift had 2 DART cases over 200,000 hours, and the night shift had 3 DART cases over 120,000 hours. Day shift: (2 x 200,000) / 200,000 = 2.0. Night shift: (3 x 200,000) / 120,000 = 5.0. The night shift has the higher rate, even though the counts are close. That points to a real issue, such as tiredness, lighting or less supervision.
What to do when your DART rate goes up
- Check if one or two cases are driving the rise.
- Look for a common cause: the same task, machine, area or shift.
- Review how return-to-work and light duty are handled.
- Talk to the people involved, not just the paperwork.
- Set one clear action for each cause and follow up in 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good DART rate?
It varies by industry. Compare with similar businesses, and watch your own trend over the year.
Is DART the same as lost time?
No. Lost time covers only days away. DART also includes restricted work and job transfer.
Do fatalities count in DART?
Fatalities are usually tracked separately, but in many recordkeeping systems a death is also counted as a case with days away. Follow your own regulator’s rule.
Why 200,000 hours?
It stands for 100 full-time workers working a full year, which is the OSHA base.
Can I convert DART to a per-million rate?
Yes. Multiply by 5 to get a figure per 1,000,000 hours.
Learn this properly
Injury statistics like DART are covered in OSHA and NEBOSH courses. ISH Institutes teaches them in Peshawar. Chat with us on WhatsApp and we will help you pick the right course.