Normalization of Deviance

Cluster centers on the 'normalization of deviance' in safety-critical engineering, where repeated minor safety violations become accepted until causing disasters like Challenger and Deepwater Horizon, emphasizing systemic failures over isolated human error.

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Keywords

latimes.com youtu.be youtube.com PR UTF8 NASA fastjetperformance.com AFAIK flightsafety.org GitHub human error error disaster failure engineers human engineering accident accidents pilot

Sample Comments

mannykannot β€’ Mar 18, 2019 β€’ View on HN

You have independently discovered a phenomenon that is known as the normalization of deviance. It has been seen in many engineering failures, such as both Space Shuttle crashes, the Deepwater Horizon explosion, etc.https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/normalization-of-devian...

erokar β€’ Mar 10, 2019 β€’ View on HN

Google the Swiss cheese theory of safety. Very seldom an accident is caused by only one thing going wrong, and very seldom is it caused by only crew error or only technical failure.

nickpinkston β€’ May 20, 2020 β€’ View on HN

This reminds of the human factors issues during the Challenger Disaster:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...

wtallis β€’ Feb 18, 2021 β€’ View on HN

Then I think you're still missing the point of the comment you replied to. Chalking something up to "human error" is not a particularly useful conclusion to come to; it doesn't really solve or prevent any problems. The takeaway should be that a system did indeed fail from a design flaw. That system was not the space shuttle as a mechanical device. The system that failed and needed to be re-designed was the process of spacecraft engineering: NASA was lacking in structural ince

LoSboccacc β€’ May 10, 2019 β€’ View on HN

exactly. "but this one time nothing happened" is just sloppy complacencythere was this article on the hn front page not longer than a month ago about this very issue https://fastjetperformance.com/podcasts/how-i-almost-destroy...

Jtsummers β€’ Apr 30, 2019 β€’ View on HN

See the article yesterday about normalization of deviance.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19770562

epgui β€’ Jul 8, 2022 β€’ View on HN

I think I would need a bit more detail than this. Most such accidents happen because of human error. There is no indication that there was a software or hardware issue, at this time.

trimbo β€’ Sep 30, 2020 β€’ View on HN

This is worth a read. I think it applies to Chernobyl, Challenger (where it was coined) and the 737 Max.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_devianceAll three had known issues (in the case of Chernobyl, for decades), but averting disaster gave people, specifically the engineers, confidence to continue.

jasonhoyt β€’ Mar 2, 2017 β€’ View on HN

"People make mistakes all the time...the problem was that our systems that were designed to recognize and correct human error failed us." [1][1] http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/01/news/mn-17288

belter β€’ Jun 9, 2023 β€’ View on HN

" Well, I don’t think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before, and it has always been due to human error." - https://youtu.be/CD9YqdWwwdw