Accidents are preventable - but only if they are correctly described and understood. Since the mid-1980s accidents have come to be seen as the consequence of complex interactions rather than simple threads of causes and effects. The focus of the book is on accident prevention rather than accident analysis, proactive rather than reactive in approach, unlike other books. The emphasis on design rather than analysis is a trend to be seen in other fields as well.

Contents: Accidents and causes; Thinking about accidents; Barrier functions and barrier systems; Understanding the role of barriers in accidents; A systemic accident model; Accident prevention; Bibliography; Author index; Subject Index.

Erik Hollnagel has been Full Professor of Human-Machine Interaction at Linköping University (S), since 1999. Previously Principal Advisor, OECD Halden Reactor Project, Norway (1995-1999); Technical Director, HRA Ltd., UK (1993-1995); Senior researcher, Department Manager, and later Principal Scientist, Computer Resources International, Denmark (1985-1993). In addition to Coping with Computers in the Cockpit edited with Sidney Dekker, he has written two books on reliability and accidents: Human reliability analysis, Academic Press, 1993; Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method, 1998 and Cognitive Task Design, 2003. He has worked closely with the patient safety programmes in Sweden, training doctors and nurses in risk assessment.