From Safety to Safety Science

3 Dominoes, safety by technique – prevention

1930‒1950

DOI: 10.4324/9781003001379-3

Chapter 3 discusses developments in safety in the 1930s and 1940s. In this period, accident models were published for the first time. In the United States, Heinrich’s visualisation of the accident process as a series of falling dominoes played a decisive role. But also, medical professionals were entering the safety domain, questioning the ‘individual hypothesis’, as was the case in the United Kingdom. The Dutch contribution to safety knowledge at the time was still rather limited. In the interbellum, the field of safety science started to mature, as manifested by the publication of several influential handbooks.

In the 1930s, industrial production increased ...