ABSTRACT
In the past the tendency when dealing with accidents in the rail industry, like many others has been firstly, to focus on the people who were directly involved in the incident and blame the individual and secondly to implement disciplinary action, increased training and/or rules and procedures in an attempt to prevent a reoccurrence. These are likely to be short term and ineffective methods for reducing unsafe behaviour and improving safety culture within an organisation (Reason, 1997). Accidents and unsafe behaviour take many forms. Reacting like this to each one is time and energy consuming and fails to anticipate the next accidentcreating scenario. The organisation does not necessarily become any stronger and safer as a result. This approach also does not consider the latent and organisational acts that contribute to event or the culture and climate that they occur in.
