There’s nothing safe out there. You should have seen that coming. People don’t think about what could go wrong.
Space shuttles shatter. Bridges buckle. Hotel walkways collapse. Levees fail. An offshore oil rig explodes, creating the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
The common thread is technological arrogance and hubris.
With a career studying more than 600 disasters, Robert Bea said, “I’m an engineer – I’m in the prevention business. But you can’t prevent what you don’t understand. Look at the oil spill problem. Everyone thinks it’s a technological problem. It’s not. It’s a management problem.”
“It’s just the arrogant presumption that you have got the thing under control, whatever the thing is. In this case, it’s drilling beyond your depth.”