ABSTRACT
Accidents have underlying socio-economic causes inextricably linked to the global politico-economic system. As for all the issues of global security, with accidents the not so fickle finger of fate points in familiar directions: towards the poor and the weak. Major transport disasters have politicized safety issues with domestic security measures frequently enacted by governments after the event. As with transport disasters and most human security threats, however, large-scale and/or high-profile disasters like at Dhaka, Bhopal and Chernobyl represent only a small, highly visible, fraction of the full picture. Deaths by accident are very much a feature of the modern world. There have always been accidental deaths, but this form of threat to human life is closely associated with technological development and has risen in accord with industrialization and the onset of modernity. People are killed today in a variety of non-technological accidents, such as by drowning, but most accidental deaths are an unfortunate by-product of technological development.
