Accid. Anal. 1 Prrv. Vol 17. No. 6. pi 475483. 1985 had in the U.S.A.

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RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Accident Analysis and Prevention invites authors and publishers to submit material for pres- entation and review in Recent Publications. Books, conference proceedings, research reports and otherfu&length studies are welcome. Persons willing to review publications for the journal are asked to submit their name, address and areas of interest to the Book Review Editor. Correspondence should be directed to:

Mary L. Chipman, Book Review Editor Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario Canada MSS IA8

Readings in Accident Investigation. Examples of the Scope, Depth and Sources. T. S. Ferry (editor). Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, IL, U.S.A. 1984. 289 pp. $34.75.

In the past several decades, the study of accidents and their prevention has become so broadly multidisciplinary that seminal contributions, both conceptual and methodological, are no longer to be found only in the traditional sources-publications devoted to fire prevention, transpor- tation accidents and industrial safety. They appear also in the literature of public health, the social and behavioral sciences, medicine and applied mathematics, as well as in the adminis- trative repor& of federal and state regulatory agencies. Even the specialized fields of safety- accident investigation, for example -have so proliferated that practitioners in adjacent subspe- cialties may have difficulty in locating one another’s recent publications or even in understanding one another’s methodologies.

Hence, the immediate value of a collection of readings is that it assembles in one convenient volume materials that are often unknown or inaccessible to most practitioners, students or members of related disciplines. But before undertaking the basic scissors-and-paste task of assembling his selections- indeed, before deciding what to include and what to omit-the editor must have his potential audience clearly in mind.

If the collection is intended for the practitioner-current or future-then the editor must choose materials suited to the reader’s level of sophistication and competence, organize them in a sequence that is pedagogically sound and embed them in an editorial framework that highlights their particular contributions or points out their shortcomings. Interstitial editorial passages can sketch the historical or philosophical context of each selection, demonstrate metb- odological and conceptual relationships among selections and in other ways encourage the reader’s active and critical participation rather than a passive ingestion of the editor’s selections.

If, on the other hand, the collection is intended for nonpractitioners, the editor’s obligations are even more onerous. He is limited in his selection to articles that explain “how it’s doni” rather than “how to do it.” Within this narrower range he must either choose those that are written in nontechnical language or, through footnoting and other glosses, define or explain terminology, acronyms and other material likely to be unfamiliar to the nonpractitioner. More- over, he must arrange his selections in a conceptual or methodological framework that makes sense to and enriches the understanding of the layman.

The present volume shows no evidence that its editor recognized any of these obligations. To begin with, there is no framework whatever, nor is there any rationale apparent for the sequence of the selections. The volume is divided into 27 chapters, each consisting of a single selection. Each selection is preceded by a four- or five-line introductory passage (misleadingly

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476 Recent Publications

labeled “Abstract”) and followed by a few superficial questions, addressed, presumably, to the student reader.

The sequence of these chapters is indeed puzzling, since the one selection that might well have provided a conceptual framework- Ludwig Benner, Jr.‘s “Five Accident Perceptions”- appears as Chapter 25, preceded by a how-to-do-it article on accident photography and followed by one on “The Investigation of Hazardous Materials Spills.” Similarly, a selection on “Causes and Control of Workplace Stress” is preceded by a case report of a hotel fire and followed by one on a mining fatality, neither of which relates in any way to stress.

If the ordering of the readings seems idiosyncratic, so, too, do the criteria by which they were selected. The level of sophistication varies widely. A report on “The Orient No. 2 Mine Disaster*’ would be easily understood by any reader willing to overlook its journalistic excesses; but another case history, “Crash on the Nimitz,” bristles with so many undefined acronyms and other naval jargon as to be virtually incomprehensible to any civilian.

The scientific quality of the selections also varies erratically-from Gordon H. Robinson’s carefully documented and cogently argued “Human Performance Limitations and Accidents” to Ted S. Ferty’s naive and exhortatory “How to Ensure a Good Investigation.” Regardless of their quality, virtually all the selections reflect a concern with “micro” techniques and viewpoints. Nowhere will the reader find selections dealing with the “macro” economic and social forces that influence the incidence of accidents, the quality of their investigation, or the uses of the resulting data.

It is not only in the selection process, however, that the desultory quality of the editing becomes apparent. Authors of the selections are inadequately identified, as are a number of the sources. Misspellings abound (Amtrack for Amtrak, principle for principal, etc.), and typo- graphic errors are so numerous that one wonders whether either the editor or the publisher did any proofreading.

DAVID KLEIN Pimboro, NC

Protecting the Worker &om Disability: Challenges for the Eighties. Paul C. Weiler, Gov- ernment of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, 1983. 149 pp.

There is growing concern for the human cost of the industrial machine that provides us the material wealth that characterizes a modem society. The toll taken in accidents and diseases that afflict workers and the public alike has drawn the attention of labour unions, public interest groups and government agencies, urging action to reduce the risks of the workplace and to indemnify those who are its victims. Dramatic events, such as the release of toxic chemicals- dioxin at Seveso, Italy, and methyl isocyanate at Bhopal, India-intensify the concern not only for the safety of the workers in chemical plants but for the surrounding public as well.

Virtually every industrial enterprise has some risk, other than fmancial, associated with it. Workers and the public are exposed to varying degrees of risk of property loss, injury or death. For some of the more established forms of industrial operations, we even know the price we will have to pay in human terms; we have, for example, an actuarial basis for estimating the costs in life lost, in injuries, and illness sustained for every ton of coal mined in the U.S. Although great progress has been made, we recognize that such hazards can not be completely eliminated, and most industrial societies have chosen to insure against these risks as a means of indemnifying the victims of these hazards. Workers’ Compensation insures workers against losses sustained in the workplace. This insurance is funded by employers and its cost is ostensibly recovered in the product cost. Catastrophic losses are more likely to be paid for out of corporate equity.

The Weiler report to the Ontario, Canada, Ministry of Labour deals with a particularly troublesome aspect of Workers’ Compensation programs everywhere: the worker’s loss may have occurred in the workplace. In their earliest forms, workers’ compensation programs were de- signed to indemnify for accidents- events in which the cause of the loss was clear, immediate and indisputable. Scheduled payments were established for particular losses. In the case of illness, the cause becomes less clear, and therefore the amount of payment more disputable.