PS Form 1769, USPS Accident Report: Filing, Codes, and OSHA

PS Form 1769 is the USPS accident report a supervisor completes any time a postal employee is injured or killed, a non-employee is hurt on postal premises, a postal vehicle is in a collision, postal or private property is damaged during operations, or a fire damages postal property. The supervisor enters it into the Postal Service’s electronic safety system within 24 hours of learning about the incident, and the completed form serves as the agency’s version of OSHA Form 301.¹

When You Have to File One

Section 821.121 of the Employee and Labor Relations Manual (ELM) lists six events that require a report:¹

Any occupational injury or illness to a postal employee. The system automatically flags whether the event is OSHA-recordable.
Death of a postal employee on USPS premises or while on the job.
Injury or death of a non-employee on postal premises.
Any motor vehicle accident resulting in death, injury, or property damage, regardless of cost or whose property was damaged.
Damage to USPS property or to property belonging to customers or the public, whether or not anyone was injured.
Any fire that damages postal property.

There is no dollar threshold. A postal vehicle that clips a customer’s mailbox and causes $50 in damage still gets reported, and a parking-lot fender-bender with no injuries is just as reportable as a serious highway collision.¹

Near-misses sit outside these triggers. The Postal Service encourages reporting close calls as a safety-awareness practice, but a PS Form 1769 is not formally required when nothing was damaged and no one was hurt.² If your office runs a local close-call process, follow it, but the formal 1769 triggers require actual injury, illness, death, or property damage.

What to Gather Before You Open the Form

Collecting evidence at the scene makes the report easier to complete and reduces the chance a reviewer sends it back. Before you start typing, pull together:

The involved employee’s name, employee identification number, craft, route assignment, and duty status at the time of the incident.
If postal equipment was involved or caused the accident, its type, model, serial number, and vehicle number.³
The exact street address or coordinates, plus weather, road surface, lighting, and visibility.
Written witness statements, taken as soon as possible.
Photographs of the scene, vehicle damage, equipment, and any visible hazards or injuries.

With the 24-hour clock running, having all of this ready before you open the form is what keeps the filing on schedule.

How to Complete PS Form 1769

The form has a written narrative on the right side and coded fields on the left. Handbook EL-801 tells supervisors to write the narrative first, then fill in the numerical codes.³ Once you’ve written out what happened in plain language, matching your description to the code list becomes straightforward.

The Narrative

Describe the sequence of events clearly enough that upper management and safety personnel understand exactly what happened without having been there.³ Stick to facts: what the employee was doing, what happened, what the outcome was. Leave out speculation about fault or opinions about what the employee should have done. If equipment played a role, identify it by type, model, and serial number in the narrative itself.

“Employee slipped and fell” is not enough. Something like “Carrier was delivering a parcel to 412 Oak St. at approximately 10:15 a.m. Walkway was covered with wet leaves. Carrier’s right foot slid forward on the third step of the front porch, and she fell backward onto the concrete walkway, landing on her left hip” tells a reviewer what environmental factor was in play and where the injury occurred.

The Codes

The left side uses numerical codes for the type of accident, contributing factors, nature of the injury, and body part affected. Pick the code that most closely fits. If none of the codes fit well, include a written description alongside the closest one.³ The coded section also carries the installation ID, accident number, and kind of accident; make sure dates and times match on both sides of the form.

Coding accuracy matters because these entries feed directly into the agency’s safety statistics and OSHA logs. A miscoded injury type can skew district-level trend data, and an event that should be flagged OSHA-recordable but isn’t creates a compliance gap.

Submission and Review

The ELM requires the report to be entered into the electronic safety system within 24 hours of the accident, the diagnosis, or notification, whichever comes first.¹ Handbook EL-801 adds that the paper form must also be submitted to the servicing safety office within three calendar days.³

The supervisor’s immediate manager reviews and signs the form, vouching for its accuracy. If data is missing or the form is improperly completed, it gets sent back for correction before signing.³ From there, three levels of review apply:¹

The supervisor’s immediate manager checks the report for accuracy and OSHA recording status and follows up on preventive action.
The installation head or designee confirms whether corrective action has been taken or planned.
Servicing safety personnel verify that causes are properly identified and the corrective action is appropriate.

Corrections made after the report has been entered require a new corrected version submitted to the system, and you contact District Safety to make changes to an existing report.¹ The current electronic repository is the Safety and Health Management Tool (SHMT), which replaced the older Employee Health and Safety system and Safety Toolkit in October 2021. The ELM still uses “EHS” in much of its text.⁴

OSHA Recordkeeping and Serious Accidents

When an accident report is entered, the system automatically applies OSHA guidelines to determine whether the event is recordable, and recordable events are placed on the OSHA 300 Log. PS Form 1769/301 is the Postal Service equivalent of OSHA Form 301, the federal Injury and Illness Incident Report. Once an event is flagged OSHA-recordable, the form must be completed within seven calendar days of notification, which is tighter than the general 24-hour requirement to initiate the report.¹

Serious accidents carry federal notification duties on top of the form. The Postal Service defines a serious accident as one that results in death, inpatient hospitalization, amputation, loss of an eye, or combined property damage exceeding $100,000.⁵ Under OSHA rules, a workplace fatality must be reported to OSHA within 8 hours, and an inpatient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye within 24 hours.⁶ Those clocks run independently of the 1769 timeline. You cannot wait for the accident report to be finished before making the OSHA call.

How the Form Connects to a Workers’ Compensation Claim

PS Form 1769 documents the accident. It is not a workers’ compensation claim. An injured employee who wants benefits under the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA) must also file Form CA-1 for a traumatic injury or CA-2 for an occupational disease with the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (OWCP). The 1769 is the agency’s internal safety record; the CA-1 is the employee’s claim for medical benefits and wage replacement.

The two are linked in practice. The CA-1 requires the supervisor to confirm that the injury occurred in the performance of duty and to verify the employee’s account against witness statements and the supervisor’s own knowledge.⁷ A thorough 1769 narrative makes that verification simple. A vague one turns the CA-1 into a memory exercise weeks later. In cases involving a death on the job, the ELM requires Form CA-6 (Official Superior’s Report of Employee’s Death) to be generated from the electronic safety system and submitted to OWCP.¹

OWCP expects the CA-1 to be forwarded within 10 working days of receipt when the claim involves medical expenses or lost time.⁷ Filing the 1769 promptly and accurately keeps you positioned to meet that deadline.

Employee Copies and Record Retention

An employee involved in a reported accident can request a copy of the PS Form 1769/301 generated from the system. The request must be in writing, and the agency is required to provide it.¹ This matters most for employees pursuing workers’ compensation claims or verifying what was recorded about their incident.

The Postal Service retains PS Form 1769/301 and the associated OSHA 300 and 300A logs for five years after the end of the calendar year in which the accident occurred, and they remain available in the electronic safety system throughout that period.¹ After five years, the records may no longer be accessible through the system, so employees with long-running claims should get their copies well before that window closes.

1
United States Postal Service. Employee and Labor Relations Manual – 820 Reports and Investigations, Program Evaluations, and Inspections
2
United States Postal Service. Safety Awareness Reminder – Close Calls Are Wake-up Calls
3
United States Postal Service. Handbook EL-801 Supervisor’s Safety Handbook
4
USPS Employee News. New Safety Tool Coming
5
United States Postal Service. Employee and Labor Relations Manual – 822 Supplementary Actions in the Event of Serious Accidents Including Fatalities
6
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 1904.39 – Reporting Fatalities, Hospitalizations, Amputations, and Losses of an Eye
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Federal Employee’s Notice of Traumatic Injury and Claim for Continuation of Pay/Compensation