For those professionals that like to take an evidence based approach to injury and accident prevention the science that informs us all about this is Human Factors Design. Engineers use it, ergonomic experts use and and accident investigators use this approach to truly determine the root cause analysis for accidents. The hard lessons learned during WWI and again in WWII was that having complex and novel technology in place without designing for the fact that there was little time to train personnel for then to be battle ready was accidental death and friendly fire. The science of ergonomics was borne out of these hard lessons whereby you always start with the design of the technology, the machines, the tools etc and then you train, and add in all of the other safety components and pieces next. Accident and “human error” prevention is a science which started over 100 years ago and comes with peer reviewed academic pure and field research. If your company really wants to stop “blaming the human factor” as the easy and less litigious way out of spill, accident, and injury this is the only way to proceed. This will apply to the safety professionals who work with the top 20% of companies who understand safety and design as a seamless part of business strategy and operations. JE Sleeth and the Sr Ergonomic Team at OPC