Due to the inevitable proximity of heavy machinery and human workers in mining
and tunneling the risk of severe accidents is high. The paper describes recent worldwide efforts to increase occupational safety in this industry. The major problems and approaches are discussed using the example of the development of proximity detection systems. Due to the hard environmental conditions, guards and protective devices cannot be used in many cases.
Consequently functional safety is gaining importance in mining and tunnelling. The Standards for functional safety are well-developed for manufactoring industry, but some issues cannot be applied directly in mining and tunnelling. One of these problems is the mean time to fail, which is a condition to reach a required safety integrity level. Small samples of data make statistical conclusion dicult. A method based on Markov chains is presented for this purposes, the results are compared with the results of the standards.