ABSTRACT
No discussion of the System Safety discipline can be conducted without reference to Willie Hammer's authoritative text, Handbook of System and Product Safety.' Many authors have been inspired by his work. Hammer's prescient observation that it is a misconception to assume that by eliminating failures, a product will be safe, set the stage for the debate of truly seismic proportions of reliability versus safety. In the preceding chapter we have examined the fundamental tenets of the "Reliability Engineering School" and its equation of "reliability" with "safety." The importance of Hammer's works lies in the fact that he recognized that there are other causes of accidents: dangerous characteristics of the product, human action, extraordinary environmental factors, or combinations of these. The 1970 Final Report of the National Commission on Product Safety discussed numerous products that have been injurious because of such deficiencies. The majority of the injuries stemmed from the results of hazardous characteristics rather than failures. He also noted that in the liability lawsuits attributed to the hazardous performance of the Corvair, the claimants cited dangerous characteristics due to negligent design, not mechanical failure. 2
Hammer'stexthasdocumentedtheenormouslossesofmilitary aircraftandpilotsandtheperspectiveofdesignersindeveloping emergencyproceduresandequipmenttobeusedwhenfailuresoccurred. Thisoverdependenceonthepilot'sabilityprecludedearlierapplicationof accidentpreventionprinciplestotheeliminationofengineering deficiencies.Withthedevelopmentoftheballisticmissiles,itbecame obviousthattheproblemofaccidentslayinthedesignandproductionof themissile.Itnowbecameapparentthatmanysafetyproblemscouldbe solvedonlybygooddesign.ForHammer,thesystemsafety(andproduct safety)conceptispredicatedonthisprinciple:
Themosteffectivemeanstoavoidaccidentsduringsystem operationisbyeliminatingorreducinghazardsanddangers duringdesignanddevelopment.
