An Engineer's View of Human Error

Book excerpt: This is an updated and expanded new edition of Trevor Kletz's work, including more examples of accidents caused by the various types of human error. It suggests to engineers how they might approach the problem of human error, and does so by describing accidents, which at first sight seem to be the result of human error. The author sets down his views on human error as a cause of accidents and illustrates them by describing a number of accidents that have occurred, mainly in the oil and chemical industries. He uses a pragmatic approach, rather than theoretical, to suggest new ways of looking at accident prevention.