A reader of this book would probably be most struck by the many instances of commonplace accidents that one seldom or never thinks about. Human error is everywhere. Workers try to bypass safety devices. Vigilance is often hard to maintain, as when a tram operator was distracted by an attractive woman and did not see the drunk who had fallen asleep on the tracks. Even in large systems, operator error can occur.Most striking about accident proneness, however, is the fact that a pattern of excess accidents per given individual had been widely recognized, particularly as populations and technological environments grew. But only when a label was applied to the phenomenon did proneness to accident make sense to people. Repeatedly, supervisors would say that they had noticed that some few people were the source of a large proportion of the accidents in the plant or on the rails or roads. When those supervisors heard the term “accident proneness,” they recognized the classification immediately and started to use the idea and anything they heard or learned about it. There was early such testimony from rapid transit executives in Germany and the United States, from manufacturers in Britain and other English-speaking countries. The idea spread because it worked for people.Not all managers were initially convinced. A British industrial psychology group reported this incident: “Our investigator had obtained accurate records of all accidents for a considerable period, and he found one instance of a boy who had already sustained five minor accidents during the period. As the boy was working in a particularly dangerous job, he was selected, together with several others who also showed high susceptibility, for transfer to other work. Before the transfer could be made, however, he was caught and lost his hand in the machinery he was cleaning. Up to this point, there had been considerable doubt on the part of the managing director as to the need for such a detailed accident survey. Needless to say, those workers who sustained multiple accidents in future were quickly removed from the danger zones.”Those who worked with groups of children were particularly quick to see the validity of the idea. Commented Helen Ross of Chicago in 1952, “Years ago, before I knew the term ‘accident proneness,’ I recognized in my summer camp [for girls] the tendency among certain children to have more than their share of accidents. ‘There goes Jane again,’ or ‘Who do you suppose fell out of the boat? Mary, of course.’”The rise of the idea of accident proneness has many striking aspects. The slow death of the idea in the later decades of the twentieth century, however, speaks to more subtle social changes.Because there was some validity of the idea, it has persisted as part of folk knowledge, referred to in novels, cartoons, and newspaper stories. Some celebrities and even a U.S. President were noted for being accident prone. It was a way of labeling people but not holding them personally responsible for their unfortunate trait. That is, accident proneness was different from carelessness.Most striking, however, was not the end of accident proneness but the fact that new social conditions brought forth a new approach to accidents and safety. Identifying and stigmatizing accident prone people was appropriate in an age when noticing individuals, particularly out of a commodified labor force, was enlightened. Discriminating against them for employment and driving, however, troubled increasing numbers of experts.The engineers solved the discrimination problem in large part by applying their safety measures to all people indiscriminately. Moderns will recognize the social style. We all have to put up with inconveniences so that all variety of citizens can have equal protection. So the engineers designed automobiles so that even a drunk would have trouble killing himself or herself. There are rails and other protective devices to protect shaky old people, no matter how much the devices get in the way of more nimble younger people. Or everyone struggles with safety caps on medicine bottles, which save the lives of many thousands of toddlers.What nobody talks about is the radical egalitarianism underlying the engineering of safety. It certainly was never the conscious intention of the engineers who were creating safe environments and devices to make everyone equal in terms of safety, regardless of gender, social status or identification. The new age of technology in the late twentieth century has social implications that have as yet not been fully explored.Accident Prone is thus an opening to unexpected insights from attempts to deal with a terrible problem no one likes to talk about, either historically or currently: the unintentional destruction of bodies and property by technology.