During 1979–1992, regulatory design and enforcement reshaped safety outcomes by altering penalties, inspection intensity, and compliance behavior, with indications that across varied settings, regulatory actions influenced investment in safety and compliance. Economic incentives embedded in workers' compensation experience-rating and wage premia steered firms' safety investments and risk-taking, resulting in differing injury patterns across hazardous occupations. Systematic surveillance and injury data collection enabled risk identification and policy feedback through national datasets and international information systems, while patterns of risk by job type and gender emerged across sectors. Historical Significance: This period established a paradigm in which policy effectiveness rests on how penalties are structured, how enforcement is conducted, and how incentive mechanisms motivate firm behavior. It also emphasized data-driven surveillance as a core feedback mechanism for safety policy, spurring integration of ergonomic, organizational, and design-oriented safeguards and paving the way for ongoing evaluation of long-term regulatory impacts.