I'm fascinated that we apparently already know what caused the derailment in Cumbria. Some bars separating the point blades broke and the inspection to check they were OK didn't happen. Job done.  Blaim laid. Except that accidents are always, always more complicated and more interesting than that. I've just been having another look at Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow, emeritus Yale Sociology professor. It's a wonderful book, written in 1984, post-Three Mile Island but pre-Chernobyl and pre-Bhopal. It's about how, as systems become more complicated and our technological reach exceeds our technological grasp, accidents become inevitable. It also tells us that any time someone says that one thing caused an accident, this will conceal as much as it will reveal.
So despite Richard Feynman's trick with a glass of ice, the Challenger disaster was about more than a chilly O-Ring. It was about cultures, practices, technologies in the context of their use and the demands that were placed on engineers to blast people into space with little more than a finger-cross for safety. We can zoom in or zoom out however we choose. The choice of microscope - looking in close-up at crossed screw threads or flawed people - or wide-angle lens - looking at systems, cultures or markets - is a political one.
The question I ask myself, be it with rail crashes or plans for nuclear new build is at what level is this risk not being examined? It's certainly easier to blame twisted metal than a high-level bureaucratic balls-up.

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