ABSTRACT
Human error is probably the most well known and widely publicised of all Human Factors concepts. High profile incidents such as the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power disasters, the Tenerife and Kegworth air disasters, the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster, and the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster have ensured that human error has received considerable attention, not only from the relevant safety and research communities, but also from the public. As a corollary, human error has been investigated across a wide range of safety critical domains; however, it continues to be identified as a contributory factor in a high proportion of accidents and incidents. For example, typical estimates suggest human error plays a role in around 70% of all commercial aviation accidents and incidents (e.g., BASE, 1997; cited in McFadden and Towell, 1999), 95% of all road traffic incidents (Rumar, 1995), and over half of all UK rail network collisions (Lawton and Ward, 2006). Further, within the health care domain, the U.S. Institute of Medicine estimates that between 44,000 and 88,000 people die each year as a result of human errors (Helmreich, 2000).
