Accidents May Happen

From Wheaties to telephones, microwave ovens to yo-yos, here are the inspiring and often funny stories of 50 mistakes and misunderstandings that helped bring about life as we know it. With hilarious cartoons and wacky facts, this fascinating compendium illustrates the adage "If you don't learn from your mistakes, there's no sense making them."

Describes how a wide variety of things such as nursery rhymes, the national anthem, anesthesia, cellophane, raisins and dynamite came into being

From Louise Millar, the acclaimed author of The Playdate, comes a gripping psychological thriller where one woman’s streak of bad luck may be something far more sinister. A MAGNETIC AND CHILLING NEW THRILLER FROM HIGHLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR LOUISE MILLAR Kate Parker has weathered unimaginable horrors—her parents died in a traffic accident on her wedding night, and her husband, Hugo, was murdered in a tragic break-in gone wrong. All she has left is her young son, Jack, and determined to make a better future for him, she attempts to pull her life back together. But are she and her son safe?

This text introduces bad events (incidents and accidents) named as metaphors. The metaphors, called as "safety animals," are named as black swan, gray rhino, gray swans, and invisible gorilla. The book analyzes incidents and accidents from the context of the safety management system in the risky industries including aviation, nuclear, chemical, oil, and petroleum. It further uses mathematical analysis of these events (through statistics and probabilities) and presents preventive and corrective measures in dealing with the same. It comprehensively covers important topics including real-time monitoring, reverse stress testing, change management, predictive maintenance, management system, contingency plans, human factors, behavioral safety, anticipatory failure determination, resilience engineering (RE), resilience management (RM), Swiss cheese model, and probability distribution. Aimed at professionals working in the fields of health and safety, quality engineering, compliance engineering, aerospace engineering, occupational health and safety, and industrial engineering, this text: Provides an insight to safety managers in analyzing bad events and the ways to deal with them Covers randomness, uncertainty, and predictability in detail Explains concepts including reverse stress testing, real-time monitoring, and predictive maintenance in a comprehensive manner Presents mathematical analysis of incidents and accidents using statistics and probability theories

“Gripping, page-turning material . . . a new way of thinking about survival in a world filled with hazards and distractions.” —Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter Faster Better and The Power of Habit A safety expert reveals why few of us are as careful as we think we are, and what we can do about it. As doctors and medical researchers work busily to extend our lives, more people each year are figuring out ways to cut them short. In fact, after a hundred years of steady decline, the rate at which people are being injured (or worse) in everyday accidents is increasing. Blame car crashes, pedestrian fatalities, home-improvement projects gone wrong, medical mistakes, home fires—not to mention all the crazy things that kids are into these days. And the problem seems to be spinning out of control. Steve Casner has devoted his career to studying the psychology of safety, and he knows there’s not a safety warning we won’t ignore or a foolproof device we can’t turn into an implement of disaster. Casner details the psychological traps that prevent us from being more careful. They’re the same whether you’re a pilot, a Hollywood stuntwoman, a parent, or the owner of a clogged dishwasher you’re trying to fix with a screwdriver. Then he shows us gripping real examples of how and when injuries happen, so we know exactly what we should really be worrying about. Careful arms readers with the latest science on how our sometimes fallible minds work, with countless takeaways to incorporate at home, at work, and everywhere in between. This book will help us keep our fingers attached in the kitchen, our kids afloat at the pool, and our teens safe behind the wheel, and demonstrates the many other ways we can maximize our chances of getting through the day in one piece.

Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them. The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research." In the new afterword to this edition Perrow reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, including Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster. The new postscript probes what the author considers to be the "quintessential 'Normal Accident'" of our time: the Y2K computer problem.