Safety Differently: Human Factors for a New Era, Second Edition

What a book, can be difficult to read in places - too technical - but I am still thinking about it. It has been a game changer for me when it comes to safety. Now when ever I hear of accidents or things going wrong I immediately think 'cause an effect' is the Old Way , we need to be looking at 'Why' the' New Way'. Well done Sydney Dekker you are an absolute master in your game. An absolute must-read for any body connected with safety - and those who are not.

One of the first Sydney Dekker Pubs I purchased, keep an open mind there are similar theories

A must read for anybody engaged in OH&S. Or anybody interested in human behaviour. A game changer.

Good book but a but dry as you would expect with this subject

A long read, but interesting

Its time to end the notion of safety and move on to resilience.

The thing about Dekker is that he approaches the subject of safety from many perspectives (societal, cultural, philosophical, historical, political, scientific etc) and manages to weave a multi-layered narrative which provides meaning and context and ultimately a deep understanding of the subject. It's not necessarily an easy read although it is well written (Dekker is the sort of academic writer we would all like to be), but you will get out of it what you put into it. If you want to understand why your workplace trumpets managerial ideas of safety ("policies, procedures, rules") but is into (frontline worker) blame ("accountability") and thus has come full circle in the last hundred years, and why this leads to unsafe workplaces, this is the book for you.

One to have on the shelf, a little hard to read but contains some gems.

Provides common sense about safety were most have gone off the rails.

This is an important book about the current state of safety science. It's dense, but highly rewarding. Thoughtful. Provocative. Not for the general reader, but I predict will become required reading for any senior safety professional and advanced university courses. Dekker places safety science fully into context, and brings together several strands of theory into a troubling conclusion that safety rates are leveling off, and that what got us here will not move safety forward much more. He illustrates our place in the broad philosophy of science, and then illustrates progress (or not) with relevant recent examples. Not all will agree with his conclusions, but to disagree with them forces us to think about safety at a deep level and answer fundamental questions. Covers complicated vs. complex systems, procedural drift, normal accidents, violations, zero accident goals, myth-making, error, high reliability organizations, resilience, and an outstanding discussion of situational awareness as the modern meaningless name for human error. Real pluses include up to date examples (such as the Asiana B777 SFO crash), fully referenced, fully indexed, and a well-structured layout with each chapter starting with key points and ending with review questions. The book is not for the general reader, and for a full appreciation really requires a prior understanding of previous seminal ideas from authors such as Reason, Perrow, Wundt, Descartes and Kuhn. It will make a perfect book for a university capstone course on safety science that pulls together important concepts and tries to look forward to where the next advances will come from. Certainly the most interesting book I've read this year. I hope this review was useful to you.