Safety experts say Australia's mining industry needs to do more to prevent single fatalities on site. 

The Western Australian mining industry has been rocked by a series of deaths and injuries at mine sites in recent weeks.

University of New South Wales Emeritus Professor Michael Quinlan says that while Australia's mine safety reputation is far ahead of most other countries, more work is still needed.

“A hundred years ago, a lot more miners were killed in disasters than today ... disasters are very rare in Australian mines,” he told reporters.

“The Australian mining industry has come a long way, due to the companies, the regulations and laws and the unions.

“But there's still the issue of single fatalities still occurring and are they preventable? Absolutely.

“They should look at the roadways, the line of sight at intersections, they should be looking at to what extent they can actually separate the movements of light vehicles and heavy vehicles on site.

“Traffic conditions on open cut mines are a really major area and if there isn't more regulatory guidance about how to deal with this, I think that would be something that the regulators should be looking at doing too and what lessons they can learn from other sites in terms of that particular type of hazard.

“I have absolutely no doubt that the mining industry can make further progress in that area and make our mines both incredibly productive and incredibly safe.

“We are world leaders, but we need to work more on this area.”

Professor Quinlan says efforts must be made to eliminate or control hazards.

“If you engineer the hazard out, then you're relying less on people's behaviour to protect them from serious events and the system is more forgiving for people making mistakes, which they do on occasion,” he said.

“[The industry] has to really show a lot of attention to safety and be prepared to spend some money on it in terms of engineering our hazards.”