Why do some safety concepts spread while others become lost in time, like tears in rain?
[** Cue wicked synthwave bladerunner tune]
Anyway, this article from @carsten busch and colleagues explores the history of the accident triangle “over nearly a century through successive cycles of replication, variation, and selection”.
It’s explored via memetics.
Shared under an open access licence.
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Extracts:
· A “meme is a cultural replicator, a unit through which ideas are transmitted and imitated”
· This paper doesn’t “discuss whether the triangle concept is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’”
· The triangle has some important lessons:
1) suggesting a “pro-active, risk-based approach”,
2) “illustrates that a focus on events with major outcomes is limiting because often there is a much greater number of low-outcome events with similar causes”,
3) Heinrich “argues that safety management must not be led by (random) outcomes but instead must concentrate on all that happens”
· “There are many characteristics that can increase attractivity and selection, such as novelty, vividness, mass familiarity, usefulness, positiveness, and universal applicability” and more
· “The accident triangle possesses many of the… characteristics: it is visual, memorable, relatively simple, useful in various contexts because its interpretation is flexible, it carries a positive message, can be used to initiate action, and it was conceived and promoted by… a ‘safety celebrity'”
· “The many mutations, including some misinterpretations, have contributed to the survival of the accident triangle”
· “The accident triangle was institutionalised in many instances and became part of larger memeplexes, ensuring selection as part of a “package” as with Loss Control, BBS, SIF, and even the “new view””
· “Somewhat speculatively, one could say that in the latter case the accident triangle-meme switched from a “protagonist” to an “antagonist” role when it was opportunistic”
· “if you want to “dislodge” … concepts from practice, merely attacking and critiquing them [is] an ineffective approach … Every time it is mentioned in a critical way means another successful replication”
· “[F]or a meme, there is no such thing as bad publicity”
· And hence most “triangles discussed today are no longer Heinrich’s or Bird’s conception, but someone else’s. However, scholars and practitioners rarely specify which variation they use or critique”
· Focus on the “substance of concepts should be more important than their symbolism. We need to… watch out for… attractive but useless memes, drowning out those that actually enhance safety”
