A professor at Kogakuin University studies "failurology" the science of analyzing failures and errors in society.
His aim is to scientifically reexamine accidents involving play equipment at parks and playgrounds to determine how to prevent future occurences.
If a swing knocks out a kid...take away the swing or the kid.
If fingers get cut off from a merry-go-round, take away the whirly gig or remove the kid.
In the end, the prof wants playground equipment that does not injure children no matter how it is used...a noble goal indeed.
The answer...train the parents to supervise their kids. That'll do it.
Or...take away the playground equipment or remove the kids.
I think it's called accident because nobody planned it for it to happen.
How do you plan for the unplanned?
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That said the professor is right, to study one's failures is important to prevent repeating them.
Sometimes indeed an accident will happen no matter what is done to prevent it, but sometimes one can find a structural fault that can be corrected if not to prevent future events then at least to reduce the chance of them happening. Was the merry go round structuraly sound? Were it's edges slightly too sharp where they could have been smoothed? So many factors that can be corrected even without taking the attention of parents and the behaviour of their child into account.
If humanity as a whole had considered the fact that accidents were unplanned as a justification to not improve on the items involved in those events we would still be driving cars with basic bumpers and no airbags our planes would still have no recourses for depressurisation ... it is the study of our failures that drives us forward.
Posted by: Darak | November 16, 2007 7:15 AM | Permalink to Comment