ABSTRACT
Accidents and Safety Introduction At whatever stage in your life you are starting to read this book, you will have been aware of disasters in the world. Ever since William Huskisson MP became the first person to be killed on UK Railways in September 1830 on the opening day of the Liverpool to Manchester line, the record of industrial accidents and disasters has been added to with frightening regularity. Even in recent history when disasters have become global media events the list keeps on growing. Table 1.1 contains a list of relatively recent events that may be classed as disasters – certainly by those effected. Probably everyone reading this now will be recalling memories of these or some dreadful accident that occurred to them, someone they knew, at some place they knew or something else that became a national tragedy, to the extent that it was lead story for days and actually has anniversary memorials. I can think of far too many of these. However, with each occurrence of harm, injury or loss that takes place, engineers grow more informed about what happens in the world that they build. Design and operating improvements are mandated, codes of better practice are developed and protection and information schemes are put in place. The goal of all these approaches is to not only ensure that similar events do not happen again, but that as time progresses, the world becomes collectively more safe. Each replacement product, system or process should be safer than the one it replaces; each brand new product, system or process should be compared with existing items to benchmark and improve on its safety performance. Of course it is far better not to have to wait for an accident to occur in order to prevent any similar future ones happening. Humanity is thinking very hard about how accidents initiate, develop and propagate into disasters, such that they can be prevented before they have opportunity to cause harm, injury or loss. Many industries and countries have authorities and inspector organisations that research and police hazardous areas of work and judge safety performance. Evidence is often called for in demonstration of safety performance and this has many beneficial features from identifying areas for improvement to actually providing defence evidence in legal cases.
