Drift into Failure

Sidney Dekker, a safety scientist who once flew Boeing 737s as an airline first officer, looks at disasters as different as the collapse of sub-prime lending, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the loss of Space Shuttle Columbia. In each case, he argues, the system drifted into failure through a long run of small, everyday decisions made under pressure, with limited resources and competing goals. Hunting for the one broken component misses how the breakdown was built.