Safety in engineering: the human element

摘要

Safety is important, but creating a safe environment is not just a question of reliability. William Williamson suggests that taking account of human foibles is as important as weak technical links. An often-neglected aspect of engineering is that at some point most machines have to interface with a human operator. It is here, unfortunately, that many potentially serious problems can occur. These problems can be grouped into two classes: those due to human error and those due to human nature.