A ground-breaking new book, Beyond Human Error: Taxonomies and Safety Science deconstructs the conventional concept ofhuman error and provides a whole new way of looking at accidents and how they might be prevented. Based on research carried out in the rail, nuclear, and defense industries, the authors show how, by concentrating solely on

The majority of accidents and incidents are caused, at some level, by human error. This text provides an introduction to this key field as well as a broad background to the subject. Incorporating the sociology of disaster and accidents into a practical framework, it offers a new paradigm for the subject. The authors address the roots ofhuman error in the Western tradition and discuss the history of human error studies, human factors, and ergonomics, exploring hidden assumptions that have colored past research. They include current methodologies of experimental design, new paradigms, and outlines situated and distributed cognition models, and more useful intervention strategies.