Design Safe Systems

Don't teach road safety

The phrase "Don’t teach road safety, design safe systems" emphasizes a shift in perspective regarding road safety. It suggests that instead of relying on educating individuals about road safety practices, transportation systems and infrastructure should be designed to inherently promote safety.

Traditional approaches to road safety have often focused on educating drivers, pedestrians, and other road users about safe behaviors such as obeying speed limits, wearing seat belts, and using crosswalks. There's growing recognition that relying solely on individual behavior change isn't reducing road accidents and fatalities.

This approach recognizes that human error is inevitable and aims to minimize the consequences of such errors by designing roads, intersections, and vehicles in a way that reduces the likelihood and severity of crashes.

Prevention through Design

The Center for Disease Control has a workspace program called "Prevention through Design".

It advocates for designing a safe work environment instead of relying on employees to be trained on how not to hurt themselves, or rely on vigialance and rigor. Just make the system safe and no training is required.

Dynamically Typed Programming Languages

Dynamically typed programming languages, such as Python, JavaScript, and Ruby, allow for flexibility and rapid development by not requiring explicit declaration of variable types. While these languages offer advantages in terms of productivity and ease of use, they also present certain challenges in terms of safety and reliability.

Unlike statically typed languages, where type errors are caught at compile-time, dynamically typed languages may encounter type-related errors only during runtime, potentially leading to unexpected behavior or runtime crashes.

However, proponents of dynamically typed languages argue that the flexibility they offer can lead to more creative and expressive programming, and that with proper testing, code review practices, and education, the risks associated with dynamic typing can be mitigated...