Design-Based Safety

Design is the “Holy Grail” of Safety

Abstract

The prevention of unintended occurrences — usually identified as “accidents” that result in personal injury or damage — is usually considered as “safety.” The most common approach to safety focuses on behavior that attempts to prevent accidents from occurring with the involvement of users and operators. In many circumstances, this has been the only option to prevent accidents.

Technology has provided us with many machines, and society relies more and more on complex equipment which now is entering an age of automation. Going forward, safe design will be the key to preventing accidents. The transition from behavior-based safety to design-based safety is not easy, as both the public and engineering professionals lack the wide scope and diversity of knowledge needed to ensure for safe design in complex systems. Traditionally, many designers and manufacturers have considered the cause of accidents to be the ineptness of users/operators. As more and more of the error-producing tasks become automated, the measuring of safe performance becomes an issue of reliability. The new concept of safety shifting from behavior-based to design-based safety now becomes a whole new ball game.