Customer Reviews

Patterns in Safety Thinking

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Geoff McIntyre faced the classic problem in summarization - make it too long and no one will read it, make it too short and it will not do justice to the subject. In keeping his essay to a easily readable 131 pages, but with enough depth to give useful insights, McIntyre has resolved his writing conundrum nicely. Looking at the subject through the triple lens of Tort Law, Reliability and System Safety is helpful, too. He cites a good number of references, including some I was not familiar with; as a researcher, this alone was worth the price of the book.

Any criticisms that I might have about unevenness are minor in the face of the breadth of the research that McIntyre lays on the table for the reader. Indeed, affording the myriad of authors their fair due must have been one of the most difficult tasks McIntyre faced. A few minor errors here and there are not fatal to the book, its message or its credibility. I'm not apologizing for them; knowledgeable, critical or careful readers always need to stay on their toes.

All said, this volume adds much more to a bookshelf than the slender space it takes up and I unreservedly recommend it to anyone who is serious in the field of safety, especially aviation safety. I cannot agree more with the author's central thesis that "safety is more than the absence of accidents." This is a concise restatement of Bannister's Law: "The difference in circumstances netween a small and a very large loss is often marginal." There is a world of wisdom in that statement.