What the DART Rate Measures
DART stands for Days Away, Restricted, or Transferred. The metric counts how many OSHA recordable injuries and illnesses were serious enough to keep a worker off the job, place them on restricted duty, or move them into a different role. It is expressed as a rate per 100 full-time-equivalent workers, which is what lets you compare safety performance across companies and sites of different sizes.
The number comes straight from your OSHA 300 Log. Add the cases marked in column H (days away from work) and column I (job transfer or restriction), multiply by 200,000, then divide by the total hours all employees worked during the year. OSHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics publish DART rates annually, so the metric doubles as an external benchmark rather than a purely internal score.
Environmental, health, and safety managers lean on the DART rate as a severity check because it ignores minor recordables that needed no work adjustment. General contractors, owner-clients, and insurance underwriters also look at it during prequalification and renewal reviews. A single number tells them how often injuries at your company actually disrupt operations and keep people off their normal duties.
The Formula and the 200,000-Hour Constant
The DART formula is: DART rate = (DART cases × 200,000) ÷ total hours worked. The 200,000 constant represents the hours 100 full-time employees work in a year: 100 workers × 40 hours per week × 50 weeks. Because of that baseline, the result reads as cases per 100 full-time workers, the same scale OSHA and BLS use for published averages.
Here is a worked example. A manufacturer logs 3 DART cases in a year and its payroll shows 400,000 hours worked. The math: (3 × 200,000) ÷ 400,000 = 1.5. That plant averaged 1.5 severe-impact cases per 100 workers, which sits right at the typical manufacturing benchmark of roughly 1.5, so the site is performing at the industry mark.
Small payrolls make this ratio jumpy. One DART case against 50,000 total hours produces a rate of 4.0, and a single incident can triple a small contractor's score overnight. Compare multi-year trends and raw case counts alongside the rate itself so one unlucky quarter does not read like a systemic failure to a client reviewing your numbers.
Which Cases Count Toward DART
A case must first qualify as OSHA recordable: work-related, a new case, and meeting at least one recording criterion such as medical treatment beyond first aid, restricted work, or days away. First-aid-only incidents — bandages, cold packs, over-the-counter medication — never enter the log, so they never touch your DART rate.
Three outcome categories create a DART case. Days away means the employee missed scheduled work. Restricted work means they could not perform one or more routine job functions, even if they stayed on site doing modified tasks. Job transfer means a permanent or temporary move to a different position while they recover. All three signal an injury serious enough to change working arrangements.
Fatalities are handled differently. They are recorded in column G of the 300 Log and trigger an 8-hour reporting call to OSHA, but they do not enter the DART arithmetic, which uses only columns H and I. They do count toward your TRIR total, one reason experienced safety managers track both numbers together rather than relying on either one alone.
Gathering Total Hours Worked Accurately
The denominator should be actual hours worked by everyone on your payroll: full-time, part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers under your supervision. Include overtime. Exclude paid time off, sick leave, and holidays because no one was working those hours. Hours worked by independent subcontractors never belong in your figure — every employer logs its own hours for its own rate.
Payroll software and time and attendance systems are the cleanest sources. If your records are scattered across paper sheets or separate crews, a time card calculator can consolidate weekly entries, and an hours calculator helps sum daily totals across shifts before you annualize the figure for the formula.
Rough guesses damage the result in both directions. Overstate hours and your rate looks better than reality; understate them and you look worse than you are. Since a DART rate of 2.0 versus 2.5 can decide a contract award, pull exact payroll totals and note the source on your OSHA 300A summary so the figure holds up when a client audits your submission.
Benchmarking Against Industry Averages
The calculator compares your result against approximate recent averages from BLS survey data: construction near 1.7, transportation and warehousing near 2.3, manufacturing near 1.5, healthcare near 1.9, retail near 1.3, and private industry overall near 1.2. These figures move a few tenths from year to year, so treat them as context rather than fixed thresholds.
Match yourself to the right industry before drawing conclusions. A 2.0 rate means something very different for a warehouse than for an accounting office. Look up your six-digit NAICS code in the BLS injury tables, or check what your clients use inside ISNetworld and Avetta — many platforms set grade thresholds relative to your sector's published average.
A rate below your sector average usually satisfies prequalification screens; anything running above 1.5 times the average often draws questions or corrective-action requests. When your rate lands high, attach context to submissions: case descriptions, corrective actions already closed, and leading-indicator data showing the trend line rather than the raw score alone.
DART vs TRIR and Other Workforce Metrics
TRIR counts every recordable case — columns G through J on the 300 Log — while DART isolates the severe subset in columns H and I. A company can hold a mediocre TRIR yet post a strong DART, meaning most of its recordables were minor. Watching both numbers exposes whether injuries are frequent, serious, or both at once.
DART measures safety outcomes, not attendance patterns. For unscheduled-absence patterns, the Bradford factor calculator weights short, repeated absences more heavily than long ones, and an absence percentage calculator tracks what share of scheduled days was lost. Those tools complement DART when you present a full workforce-health picture to leadership.
Turnover adds another layer, because new hires carry higher injury rates in most industries. An attrition rate calculator shows how stable the workforce is behind your safety data. Read together, safety, absence, and turnover metrics help separate a genuine hazard problem from a staffing-stability problem wearing a similar costume.
How DART Affects Contracts and Insurance
Many industrial clients screen vendors by DART rate before awarding work. Platforms like ISNetworld, Avetta, and Veriforce score your submitted rate against sector averages, and grades below a client's floor can block you from bidding until you file a documented improvement plan. Keeping the number current and auditable is part of staying billable in heavy industry.
Workers' compensation carriers watch the same data. Your experience modification factor rises with lost-time claims, and each DART case tends to stay in the calculation for three policy years. Uncontrolled injury costs act like a steady cash drain you would normally catch with a burn rate calculator — quiet outflows that compound until renewal season exposes them.
On the positive side, safety spending defends itself in numbers. A business budget calculator frames guardrails, PPE, and training as planned line items, and an ROI calculator can compare that spend against avoided claim costs, premium reductions, and the contract wins a lower DART rate makes possible.
Practical Ways to Lower Your DART Rate
Cutting DART cases means cutting serious injuries, so target the hazards that produce lost time: falls, struck-by incidents, overexertion, and machine contact. Near-miss reporting, regular site inspections, and toolbox talks surface risks before they become recordables. Leading indicators like inspection counts and hazard-closeout times predict next year's rate better than lagging numbers alone.
Ergonomics deserves emphasis because musculoskeletal injuries drive a large share of restricted-duty cases in warehouses, healthcare, and manufacturing. Job-hazard analysis, lift-assist equipment, rotation schedules, and workstation redesign remove the exertion at its source. Follow the hierarchy of controls — eliminate, substitute, engineer, administrate, then PPE — since engineered fixes hold up long after a training session fades from memory.
A structured return-to-work program matters too. Placing a recovering worker in a transitional role does not remove the case from DART — restricted and transferred cases still count — but it shortens days-away time, cuts indemnity payments, and keeps the worker engaged. Track recovery placement with an attendance calculator so every light-duty plan follows a defined end date instead of drifting.