The purpose of this comment is to report our results in updating the empirical work reported by W. H. Andrews and C. L. Christenson in a recent issue of this journal [1]. Andrews and Christenson (hereafter A-C) attempted to see if significant quantitative relationships could be established between injury rates in underground bituminous coal mining and several other variables including governmental controls. Our results extend their models to examine the effects of the Federal Coal Mine Safety Act Amendments of 1965 and the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. In this comment we summarize the relevant parts of the A-C study, present a brief summary of recent legislation with some empirical evidence regarding its effectiveness, and indicate some tentative conclusions regarding the effects of governmental regulation on safety in underground bituminous coal mining. In the A-C models several different inde-
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Andrews et al. (1974) studied this question.