ABSTRACT
The American National Standards Institute defines safety simply as the freedom from unacceptable risk, where unacceptable risk is indirectly defined as a risk for which the probability is too high. The rapid mechanisation of work that followed led to a growing number of hitherto unknown types of accidents, where the common factor was the breakdown, failure, or malfunctioning of active technology. The sharp end versus blunt end distinction became popular in the early 1990s as a way of illustrating how human performance was determined not only by the current situation but also by what had happened earlier, and in different parts of the organisation. The focus was mainly on 'human errors', but the blunt end was introduced to make it clear that the 'errors' should not just be blamed on the people who did the work, but also on those who planned, organised and prepared it.
