Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies Revised Edition

by Charles Perrow (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0691004129

ISBN-10: 0691004129

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Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them.

The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research." In the new afterword to this edition Perrow reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, including Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster. The new postscript probes what the author considers to be the "quintessential 'Normal Accident'" of our time: the Y2K computer problem.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Hang a curtain too close to a fireplace and you run the risk of setting your house ablaze. Drive a car on a pitch-black night without headlights, and you dramatically increase the odds of smacking into a tree.

These are matters of common sense, applied to simple questions of cause and effect. But what happens, asks systems-behavior expert Charles Perrow, when common sense runs up against the complex systems, electrical and mechanical, with which we have surrounded ourselves? Plenty of mayhem can ensue, he replies. The Chernobyl nuclear accident, to name one recent disaster, was partially brought about by the failure of a safety system that was being brought on line, a failure that touched off an unforeseeable and irreversible chain of disruptions; the less severe but still frightening accident at Three Mile Island, similarly, came about as the result of small errors that, taken by themselves, were insignificant, but that snowballed to near-catastrophic result.

Only through such failures, Perrow suggests, can designers improve the safety of complex systems. But, he adds, those improvements may introduce new opportunities for disaster. Looking at an array of real and potential technological mishaps--including the Bhopal chemical-plant accident of 1984, the Challenger explosion of 1986, and the possible disruptions of Y2K and genetic engineering--Perrow concludes that as our technologies become more complex, the odds of tragic results increase. His treatise makes for sobering and provocative reading. --Gregory McNamee

Review

"[Normal Accidents is] a penetrating study of catastrophes and near catastrophes in several high-risk industries. Mr. Perrow ... writes lucidly and makes it clear that `normal' accidents are the inevitable consequences of the way we launch industrial ventures.... An outstanding analysis of organizational complexity."---John Pfeiffer, The New York Times

"[Perrow's] research undermines promises that `better management' and `more operator training' can eliminate catastrophic accidents. In doing so, he challenges us to ponder what could happen to justice, community, liberty, and hope in a society where such events are normal."---Deborah A. Stone, Technology Review

"Normal Accidents is a testament to the value of rigorous thinking when applied to a critical problem."---Nick Pidgeon, Nature

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Revised edition (September 27, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691004129
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691004129
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.38 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.1 x 1.18 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #213,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #38 in Technology Safety & Health
- #38 in Industrial Health & Safety
- #186 in Safety & First Aid (Books)

Customer Reviews:
127 ratings

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Charles Perrow

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Charles Perrow is professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University. His interests include the development of bureaucracy in the 19th century, protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, the prospects for democratic work organizations, and the origins of American capitalism.

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Wash your hands

Explains why despite more safety and regulations don’t always predict good outcomes

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2022

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Perrow does an excellent job making complex systems more understandable and why multiple interactions between complex components can cause unforeseen accidents despite the best planned safety features.

The topic may seem difficult to understand, but with multiple examples, Perrow makes it seem clear as day. The historical record of certain industries and what they’ve done for protection explain why some dangerous operations have a good safety record, yet other complex operations break down often despite layers of “protection” - the “normal accident”.

If you wonder why some companies making “dangerous products” have a good safety record, while other heavily regulated industries have more accidents than expected, then this book is for you.

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Amazon Customer

A brilliant analysis.

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2014

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This book is an expatiation of Murphy's Law. The author argues that complex systems are vulnerable to failure and that failures are unpredictable because, in complex systems, the way failing components fail synergistically is inherently impossible to foresee.
The Challenger explosion, for example, has been blamed on a number of lapses in human judgment. But once one thing on the shuttle failed - I this case the O-rings on the solid rocket booster, an unanticipated cascade of failures followed. Similarly, the accident at Three Mile Island resulted from a faulty alarm which was known to be faulty, and was therefore ignored even as temperatures inside the containment dome were skyrocketing. The failure of a component, coupled with human misinterpretation of the failure. led to a cascade of bad events and wrong decisions.
Perrow emphasizes that these events might be attributed to human error, but the humans involved have not seen this sequences of events before, such a cascade of related failures was never anticipated, and the humans have no way to understand what is happening. So "operator error" is an illusion.
This book was written before the astounding disaster of Fukushima, but that series of catastrophes certainly fits Perrow's paradigm. Perrow is pessimistic about nuclear power. The fact that we haven't had more reactor disasters, Perrow says, is because the devices haven't yet had time to express themselves.
Any social scientist, physical scientist, or policymaker should read this book.

11 people found this helpful

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Loyal Amazon Customer

A Thoughtful but Dated Argument

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2019

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It's worth noting first that the updated edition is just an afterward added in 1999 to the 1984 edition. The author delves into a highly relevant and worthwhile set of issues in our complex technological world but the flow of the examples as well as the connection to a useful conclusion doesn't happen. This book could have been so much more but somehow the dots don't connect in the way the author promises.

2 people found this helpful

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Dr Bob

details the risk inherent in a highly complex systems, but a lot of theory and stats make it dry

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2018

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Interesting book that shows how highly complex systems with significant inherent danger, such as nuclear plants, oil tankers, and many others, can fail catastrophically due to their complexity, no matter how many safety measures are put in place. In fact, the safety measures can increase the risk of catastrophic failure. On the downside, one is ground down by the barrage of theory and statistics, which as the book goes on, gets even drier, and more theoretical. Mixed bag.

2 people found this helpful

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Daniel Curtis

Insightful framework, poorly-supported political conclusions

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2018

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Perrow provides an insightful framework for understanding the complex systems we live with every day and the ways they fail. Unfortunately, he spends his conclusion trying to make policy recommendations that aren't actually well supported by his own framework.

I highly recommend nearly all of this book for anyone that will be designing, operating, or criticizing complex systems. Aside from poorly explained comments on nuclear criticality accidents and naval nuclear reactors, the earlier chapters of the book are technically quite sound, and Perrow's framework is a good starting point to think about how to make complex systems as safe and resilient as possible.

4 people found this helpful

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Laurie LM

Read this. March 2011, TIMELY Emergent Properties

Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2011

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I read this 12 years ago. TOday, March 19, 2011, nuke disaster in Japan, more timely than ever. Perrow introduced me to tightly coupled, complex systems like nuke plants. I gravitated to his understandable explanations of the matrix of complex v linear and loose v tight coupling. Example of linear-tight is a bakery, and a University is complex-loose. Nuke plants are complex-tight. I agree with him that no amount of added safety features can be economically installed to make nuke plants safe. Either because there are emergent properties that can never be anticipated ( E.P. Chlorine is a toxic green gas, Sodium is a reactive gray metal. Combined they are table salt, partly responsible for life on earth, but you could NEVER have predicted that before hand from the starting ingredients) and or the cost $$$$$$ is prohibative. Case in point, the back-up generators for cooling Japan's now melting down nuke plant were on the ground to protect against typhoons from disabling them, but the tsunami got to them. But as per Perrow, even if there were tertiary back-ups up higher, another, additional unanticipatable flaw, might have emerged anyway.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Seajay

An accident theory classic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2021

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I'm a safety engineer, so this stuff is my bread and butter. I can tell you that this is a highly respected book in the field. A little dated now so don't take everything it says as gospel but it's essential reading to understand where modern safety systems came from.

MRT

Entertaining and, before all, very useful insights!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2015

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Working as an engineer, the work of Charles Perrow is a must to understand the world beyond your keyboard. The solutions to most technical problems has often been to add more technical stuff (...) The result is just as bad as the idea, but how to handle it, and how to change course?
And beyond the "prescription", I really appreciate the stories and the reminder of some definitions (like "complexity" vs "analysability"), which are often forgotten when you are full of eagerness to create your "system".

PF VEREYCKEN

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 30, 2017

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Puts it into perspective

Diggin' It

Wonderful book, but keep your eyes on the prize

Reviewed in Canada on August 6, 2012

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If you want to get the most from Perrow's analysis, you have to do two things: (1) put all your preconceived biases about "ivory league" academics in check, and (2) avoid getting overly distracted by the often mind-numbing technical details (a warning Perrow repeats). His point is that accidents are an embedded consequence of modern complex systems; that narrow conceptualizations of "human error" tell only a fraction of the story; and that improving safety through even more complex technologies often generates fertile ground for .. you guessed it... even more accidents. The book is wonderfully researched and well written. However, because I have a predilection for macro social theory, I would have like to have read more about how this "normal accident" phenomenon intersects with a broader sociology of modernity. That said, it's a fantastic book that provides a great foundation for Vaughan's book on the Challenger launch decision The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA .

One person found this helpful

Gord McKenna

Out of date, a little to focussed on nuclear stuff

Reviewed in Canada on August 8, 2010

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The book is good, but the examples have become dated, and I didn't find it provided useable advice on just how to live with high-risk technologies. There are better books on accidents, system design, and learning from mistakes.

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Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies Revised Edition

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