Article August 6, 2001 Issue

Do accidents have to happen?

By J. Thomas Black

MANY PEOPLE BELIEVE that an accident is like the rain. You may not know when it's coming, but sooner or later, it will be here. The theory is that sooner or later, one's luck runs out, or that one has a string of bad luck, and accidents happen.

So it may come as a surprise to some to learn that there are people who believe accidents are preventable. In the field of aviation, for instance, it is widely accepted that nearly all mishaps are avoidable. This is not some mystical denial. It is a conviction, based on thorough analyses of thousands of accidents, that each was caused by some preventable mechanical failure or human error. The rare instances that don't fit those categories stem from ignorance about certain physical effects; luck, apparently, has nothing to do with it.

When I was a pilot in the United States Navy, the service-wide policy was that there were no accidents or incidents that just caused themselves. There were only preventable incidents, whose causes were not detected soon enough.

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