Success rather than failure as a basis for good practice guidance on functional safety

Accidents and incidents are extensively analysed. The results of the analyses are used to provide recommendations for avoidance of accidents in the future. Work by Leveson and Rasmussen seeks to extend such analyses to take account of the processes used to deal with the conflict between safety and efficiency. This paper notes that there appears to be little published work analysing successful systems. The paper does not attempt to provide such analysis but argues that it is needed, to identify those systems that successfully deliver safety and to analyse what the common factors are so as to provide authoritative and well founded guidance on what to do rather than just what not to do.