Safer Systems: People Training or System Tuning?

Safety is usually seen as a problem when it is absent rather than when it is present, where accidents, incidents, and the like represent a lack of safety rather than the presence of safety. To explain this lack of safety, one or more causes must be found. In the management of industrial safety, the human factor has traditionally been seen as a weak element; human error is often offered as the first, and sometimes the only cause of lack of safety and human factors have since the early days offered three principal solutions, namely training, design, and automation.