How are todays hearts and minds programs linked to a late-19th century definition of human factors as peoples moral and mental deficits? What do Heinrichs unsafe acts from the 1930s have in common with the Swiss cheese model of the early 1990s? Why was the reinvention of human factors in the 1940s such an important event in the development of safety thinking? What makes many of our current systems so complex and impervious to Tayloristic safety interventions? Foundations of Safety Science cov...

When faced with a ’human error’ problem, you may be tempted to ask 'Why didn’t these people watch out better?' Or, 'How can I get my people more engaged in safety?' You might think you can solve your safety problems by telling your people to be more careful, by reprimanding the miscreants, by issuing a new rule or procedure and demanding compliance. These are all expressions of 'The Bad Apple Theory' where you believe your system is basically safe if it were not for those few unreliable...