ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the main theories of accident causation. As Heinrich's theory is the original basis for attributing accident causation to worker behaviour and to a strict formulaic reduction in accidents, Manuele advocates a complete abandonment of the theory. At the same time as Rasmussen and Reason were developing their ideas other theorists were developing 'systematic' models of accident causation referred to as 'tree models'; for example 'fault trees', 'event trees' and 'management oversight risk tree'. Dekker's oft repeated criticism of the linear models is that they are 'Newtonian Cartesian', that they give the impression that accident causation can be predicted or explained with mathematical certainty whereas the real world is more complex than simplistic mathematics. Although there is no theory of high reliability organisations as such, they offer an insight into the problems of accident causation theory.
