The in itinere-work accident and its mirroring to COVID-19: oximors of the causal nexus in times of pandemics

Abstract

It takes advantage of the health crisis, the state of public calamity, to create opportunities to reduce the scope of accident coverage. The use of the COVID-19 pandemic as an artifice to denature the Brazilian accident regulatory system has been attractive to those who intend to change it indirectly and subtly, without the need for legal change. It starts with an anomaly – disregarding the accident on the way in the calculation of the Accident Prevention Factor (FAP) under the oxymoron: it is an accident at work, but it is not! It is argued that the employer does not have control over risk situations and, therefore, cannot be held responsible, under penalty of discouraging the FAP as an incentive to prevention. In the same vein, the mirroring of this oxymoron is rehearsed in an attempt to adopt the same anomalous logic of excluding COVID-19's involvement from the accident list. This article presents the accidental typology, while demonstrating the obsoleteness of the causal nexus replaced by the technical nexus since 1967, as well as reaffirming the accidental nature of incapacities resulting from route accidents and COVID-19, except for home office.