During this unit,
we are going to explore a new concept of safety,
not opposed to the traditional definition
we have already seen,
but as a complementary approach to safety.
As you have seen in the previous lessons,
safety is not an easy concept to explain.
Traditionally, most people think of safety
as the absence of accidents or incidents.
In this approach,
some activity is considered safe
when we are in a state
where as few things as possible can go wrong.
Some people started to call this safety I.
According to this, unwanted situations happen
due to technical, human or organizational failures
and malfunctions.
So in Safety I, management responds
when there is an accident or an incident,
in order to discover what went wrong
and to try to find a solution.
So the purpose of an accident investigation
is to identify the causes
and all the contributory factors of adverse outcomes.
While risk assessments try to determine their livelihood.
Both approaches then try to eliminate causes or improve barriers
or both things.
And now, we are going to see a new philosophy
of how to approach safety.
But let's see an example.
What is safety?
Let's look at this graph.
In this chart, we have all the traffic accidents per year
in the Spanish roads.
All of them are traffic accidents
or traffic fatal accidents in Spanish roads.
From the beginning of 1960
to the end of 2017.
As we can see, the first year of the series, 1960,
has 1300 deaths
on the Spanish roads.
And this tendency rises until 1989,
where we had the highest number of the series.
So looking at this, according to Safety I,
we could say that 1989 was a more dangerous
or unsafe year than 1960.
Which is not really true.
Because we are not considering many things,
like for example, cars are better in 1989.
They are safer. Roads are safer.
But basically,
in 1960, there were one million cars on the Spanish roads.
While, in 1989 there were 12 millions.
So basically, according to trips per car,
trips per people or per unit, it should be safer.
In 1989, Spanish authorities started to improve roads,
cars, etc., in order to reduce the risk.
And finally, in 2010,
we had a very low number of accidents
compared with the end of the 80s.
Once again, here we have much more cars
on the roads than in the previous years.
There are more long trips on the Spanish roads,
and still we have a smaller number in 1960.
According to Safety I, which only worries about the number of events,
1960 is still safer. It is not true.
And finally, we can say that the last five, six years,
the number of accidents has been more or less stable.
Is it safe or is it fair to say that the last six years
are as safe as the 60's?
Nah, it is not because, basically,
now there are thousands or millions
of people taking their cars,
and doing long trips in the Spanish roads.
Thirty or thirty four times more than in 1960.
So more people arrived to their destinies than in 1960,
or more people per trip.
So that means
that we have to try to look for something new.
And what we are going to look at here,
are all those things that go right
and that help us to improve safety.
It is easier to learn or improve safety
from small events that go right
than from huge or big ones that go bad.
After this introduction, we can continue.