Safe Systems principles

While governments scan to operate mostly at the reactive level, the leading institutions, at least in Australia, operate at the calculative, if not the proactive, level. The adoption of Safe System principles and the development of sdentilically based traffic... 

In Chapter 6 we lauded the evolution of Safe System as the conceptual approach underpinning the development of modem traffic safety strategies. We also noted a persistent gap between knowledge of Safe System principles at the political and bureaucratic level and the acceptance of their implications for policy and practice. We speculated that the apparently high costs of implementation and the need to accept public accountability for outcomes make road trauma an inconvenient truth for governments throughout much of the Western motorised world. 

In particular, transport agencies responsible for road system design, construction and maintenance, and traffic operations should ensure their staff understand, accept, and apply Safe System principles. In the short term, this will require the conduct of regular in-service training, and in the longer term, the inclusion of appropriate units in undergraduate courses. 

The NHS is evolving and it is important that healthcare professionals across the health service evolve with it. This book provides a helpful and timely introduction to the principles and practice of developing inherently safe systems for heallhcare. 

Safe life A system is designed according to the safe life principle if the safety relevant function is available with high probability. 

The safe hfe principle requires detection of aU critical failures and an adequate safety reaction. During this time, the system must still be safe enough. This requires monitoring of critical components Note that redimdancy itself is not enough since dormant failiues of these components must be prevented. This must be combined with appropriate action to prevent the occurrence of double failure. For this reason, automatic safety braking on detection of critical faQiues is implemented. By this approach the accinnulation of faults is prevented, since this would be crucial for safe-hfe systems. 

In this paper we have shown how safety principles cane be efficiently applied to design a safe system. Safety principles allow to bypass a trial and error phase in development. They allow to design a safe architecture in a straightforward manner. 

System safety may grow as a separate discipline or the system safety effort may be absorbed into the mainstream of industrial safety, loss prevention, risk management, loss control, or some other program. A new name or buzzword may appear. Nevertheless, the need for first-time safe systems and for the application of system safety principles, tools, and techniques to systematically identify, analyze, and control hazards as early in the life cycle as possible (with continuing efforts throughout the life cycle) will continue to grow indefinitely. 

The permit-to-work procedure is a type of safe system to work procedure used in specialized and potentially dangerous plant process situations. The procedure was developed for the chemical industry, but the principle is equally applicable to the management of complex risk in other industries or situations. For example ... 

The same principle applied in Keys v. Shoefayre Ltd in which the owner of a retail shop failed to take proper precautions to protect his employees who worked in a shop in an area with a high crime rate. Here it was held that the employer was in breach of a fundamental term of the contract of employment to take reasonable care to provide a safe system of work and to have reasonably safe premises and that the resignation of Mrs Keys amounted to unfair constructive dismissal. 

A necessary prerequisite in connection with the study of system safety is a working knowledge of the principles of safe systems of work and job safety analysis. Also an appreciation of how hazard and operability studies can be used will be of assistance. 

Separation of safety systems channels to exclude common cause failures the incorporation of safe failure principle in the component design ... 

The fail-safe design principle will be applied in the new system to the extent possible. The possibility for undetectable failures will be significantly reduced. 

Two of the above illustrated visions can be labelled Safe System Sustainable Safety (the Netherlands) and Vision Zero (Sweden). The Australian approach was introduced much later, and uses principles which were derived from the Dutch and Swedish visions and adapted to Australian conditions and circumstances. The Dutch and Swedish visions have far more similarities than differences. In both visions, the human aspect takes pride of place Sustainable Safety and Vision Zero having taken the physical vulnerability (in a crash) as a starting point. The second aspect (the human being as a road user who commits errors and offences) also has a central position in both visions, albeit that Sustainable Safety has worked this out in much... 

Within the United Kingdom, the application of industrial occupational hygiene principles and the operation of defined safe systems of work in museums are both recent developments. Before the commencement of the Health and Safety at Work Etc. Act (HASAWA) in 1974, few museums were required to take notice of workplace safety legislation under either the Factories Act, 1964 or the Offices Shops and Railway Premises Act, 1963 and, in common with most types of educational establishment, the last decade has come as something of a shock. The past decade, especially the last few years, has seen some attempts directed at a rapid, and on occasion over-hasty, adoption of safer practices across a range of activities in museums, including research, conservation, visitor welfare and fieldwork—all areas in which health and safety should be prime considerations. 

The safe system is variously described in a number of jurisdictions but has a single core principle a recognition that road users will make mistakes, or inappropriate decisions, and that the system, while also minimizing errors, should accommodate these errors so that no individual road user is exposed to crash forces likely to result in death or serious injury. The system then manages their safety by providing them with vehicles, road and roadside infrastracmre and travel speeds that combine to ensure that any crashes that do eventuate result in crash forces that are below tire level of human tolerance to physical harm. 

According to the recommended approach of the OECD s Towards Zero -Ambitious Road Safety Targets and the Safe System Approach [OEC 08], a strategic planning process on the basis of the Safe Systems approach principles can be outlined as follows ... 

Brummer SB, Turner MJ (1975) Electrical-stimulation of nervous-system - principle of safe charge injection with noble-metal electrodes. Bioelectrochemistry and Bioenergetics 2 13-25. 

System safety is a process for conducting the intentional and planned application of management and engineering principles, criteria, and techniques for the purpose of developing a safe system. System safety applies to all phases of the system life cycle. The basic system safety process involves the following elements ... 

Applying these principles, adapted to computer technology, to the challenges of dependability, to economic constraints and regulations, to histoiy and to the experience of each professional sector, forms a state of the art enabUng the design, build, and operation of a safe systems, i.e. with a level of risk tolerated by society. 

This principle applies to safety in the strict sense, applicable to launchers, inhabited flights, and oibital transport. This corresponds to, for example, the safety system intended to destroy a lanncher in case of incorrect and dangerous flight profile, or a safely system responsible for monitoring the docking of the ATV and performing the colhsion avoidance maneuver. 

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