From Safety to Safety Science

4 Prevention, behaviour and the makeable man

1950–1970

DOI: 10.4324/9781003001379-4

This chapter focuses on the 1950s and 1960s and also describes the scaling up of the process industry. The ‘modern management approach’, which originated in post-war Japan, also emerged in this period. The growing scope of the safety domain in the United States included the prevention of property damage, and developed a human factor approach. New models and safety techniques were developed, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. In these and many other countries, and also in the Netherlands, a new approach, ergonomics, had a major impact on the development of safety science. A new safety theory, ‘task dynamics’, emerged in the Netherlands. Although ...