“Saying an accident is due to human failing is about as helpful as saying that a fall is due to gravity. It is true but it does not lead to constructive action”.
Some of the classic, and well-known, wisdom from Kletz (source: An Engineer’s View of Human Error).
Extracts:
· The whole ‘most accidents are due to human error’ is argued to be pretty absurd, since virtually all non-natural disasters “is due to human error: someone, usually a manager, has to decide what to do; someone, usually a designer, has to decide how to do it; someone, usually an operator, has to do it”
· “All of them can make errors but the operator is at the end of the chain and often gets all the blame”
· Kletz recognises behavioural and motivational approaches, stating that while “teachers, clergymen, social workers, psychologists — will no doubt continue to try … engineers are likely to achieve less”
· Hence, “Let us therefore accept that people are the one component of the systems we design that we cannot redesign or modify. We can design better pumps, compressors, distillation columns, etc, but we are left with Mark I man and woman”
· We should, therefore, improve the environment where people work and work methods – design, constraints etc.
SafetyInsights.org 
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