ABSTRACT
This article deals with the change in safety requirements and technological possibilities in the course of industrialization by looking at the establishment of street lighting in Bielefeld in the 19th century. As will be shown, the development from oil to gas lanterns coincided with a change in the security needs of the urban middle class. It was the technical possibilities of gas lighting to penetrate the urban space at night that made marginalized groups of people who were perceived as a security risk visible. This, together with the bourgeois internalization of the disciplinary effects of light, made this infrastructure possible in Bielefeld. While the urban populations of the pre-modern and early 19th century were still skeptical or dismissive of lanterns, by the mid-19th century their installation was already part of decidedly urban bourgeois demands for more safety in the areas of personal, economic and traffic safety. The lantern thus changed from an instrument of pre-modern visibility to an instrument of constant visibility in the modern age, which at the same time led to new lines of conflict when the expansion and extension of lighting was not as comprehensive as demanded by the urban bourgeoisie. In addition to the changes and conjunctures of security needs in the course of industrialization, Bielefeld also shows that an internalization of the concept of sovereignty by no means meant the absence of conflict. On the basis of administrative acts and petitions, the history of Bielefeld's street lighting is placed in a larger transformation of security, technology and urban spatial design from the perspective of historical security research, drawing on Foucoult's concept of gouvernmentalité. The results show that the history of technology and infrastructure can significantly deepen and contextualize the findings of historical security research. The use and expectations of technology were an essential part of a new understanding of security, as well as the socially segmented organization of urban space through a sometimes precarious alliance of different groups of actors.
Subject(s)
Lighting , History, 19th Century , Lighting/history , Humans , Germany , Safety/history , Urban Population/historySubject(s)
Firearms , Intimate Partner Violence , Judicial Role , Safety , Women's Health , Female , Humans , Firearms/legislation & jurisprudence , Intimate Partner Violence/legislation & jurisprudence , Intimate Partner Violence/prevention & control , Women's Health/history , Women's Health/legislation & jurisprudence , Safety/history , Safety/legislation & jurisprudence , Judicial Role/historyABSTRACT
Road traffic deaths in high-income countries (HICs) have been steadily declining for five decades, but are rising or stable in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We use time-series cross-sectional methods to assess how age- and sex- specific death rates evolved in 20 HICs during 1955-2015, controlling for income, population density and urbanization. Past work has attributed improvements in safety in HICs to income growth, suggesting that countries intervene when they become richer (Kuznets hypothesis). In contrast, we show that HICs had statistically significant declines in road traffic injuries starting in the late 1960s that persist after controlling for income effects, and inclusion of a lagged dependent variable. These findings are consistent for all age-sex groups but the effects are strongest for the elderly and young children. We argue that the reversal in the traffic injury trend did not occur because HICs reached an income threshold. Instead, the 1960s were a period of paradigmatic change in thinking about road safety. Subsequent, safety improvements occurred because countries at different income levels established regulatory institutions that had a legislative mandate and financial resources to conduct large-scale safety interventions.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/history , Developed Countries , Safety/history , Wounds and Injuries/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Accidents, Traffic/statistics & numerical data , Adolescent , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Child , Child, Preschool , Cross-Sectional Studies , Female , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Wounds and Injuries/epidemiology , Young AdultSubject(s)
Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919/history , Influenza, Human/history , Influenza, Human/nursing , Mortality/history , Nurse's Role/history , Pandemics/history , Safety/history , Adult , Female , History of Nursing , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919/mortality , Influenza, Human/epidemiology , Influenza, Human/mortality , Male , Middle AgedABSTRACT
Unions, health and safety activists, and professionals came together to create Coalitions for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH groups) in a number of cities across the United States beginning in the 1970s. The COSHes have played an important and unique role in advocating worker health and safety since that time, through activities including technical assistance, training and education, and campaigns on workplace and public policies. In New York State, activist coalitions created eight COSH groups distributed around the state. This paper presents a history of New York's COSHes based on interviews with key participants. The interviews shed light on the origins of the COSH movement in New York, the development and activities of the COSHes, and the organizational trajectory of individual New York COSHes in response to both extra and intraorganizational challenges. Participants' accounts of these issues may be useful for those seeking to sustain the COSH movement.
Subject(s)
Political Activism , Safety/history , Safety/standards , History, 20th Century , Humans , New York , Occupational Health/history , United StatesABSTRACT
Starting with initiatives dating back to the mid-1800s, we provide a high-level review of the key trends and developments in the application of applied psychology to the field of occupational safety. Factory laws, basic worker compensation, and research on accident proneness comprised much of the early work. Thus, early research and practice very much focused on the individual worker, the design of their work, and their basic protection. Gradually and over time, the focus began to navigate further into the organizational context. One of the early efforts to broaden beyond the individual worker was a significant focus on safety-related training during the middle of the 20th century. Toward the latter years of the 20th century and continuing the move from the individual worker to the broader organizational context, there was a significant increase in leadership and organizational climate (safety climate) research. Ultimately, this resulted in the development of a multilevel model of safety culture/climate. After discussing these trends, we identify key conclusions and opportunities for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record
Subject(s)
Occupational Health , Organizational Culture , Psychology, Industrial , Research , Safety , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Occupational Health/history , Psychology, Industrial/history , Research/history , Safety/historyABSTRACT
This paper describes three applications of Rasmussen's idea to systems engineering practice. The first is the application of the abstraction hierarchy to engineering specifications, particularly requirements specification. The second is the use of Rasmussen's ideas in safety modeling and analysis to create a new, more powerful type of accident causation model that extends traditional models to better handle human-operated, software-intensive, sociotechnical systems. Because this new model has a formal, mathematical foundation built on systems theory (as was Rasmussen's original model), new modeling and analysis tools become possible. The third application is to engineering hazard analysis. Engineers have traditionally either omitted human from consideration in system hazard analysis or have treated them rather superficially, for example, that they behave randomly. Applying Rasmussen's model of human error to a powerful new hazard analysis technique allows human behavior to be included in engineering hazard analysis.
Subject(s)
Ergonomics/methods , Safety , Systems Analysis , Systems Theory , Ergonomics/history , History, 20th Century , Humans , Safety/historyABSTRACT
Why did the recumbent bicycle never become a dominant design, despite the fact that it was faster than the safety bicycle on the racetrack? Hassaan Ahmed et al. argue in their recently published paper that the main reason for the marginalization of the recumbent bicycle was semiotic power deployed by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). Here, I demonstrate that the authors drew their conclusions from an incomplete application of the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework. Understanding the diffusion of alternative bicycle designs requires considering more than speed, and more than the UCI as a powerful actor. The recumbent bicycle was fast, but rather tricky to ride, and was not really feasible for the transport needs of the working classes, which constituted the most relevant social group of bicycle users during the 1930s.
Subject(s)
Bicycling/history , Equipment Design/history , History, 20th Century , Humans , Safety/history , Social Values , Technology/historySubject(s)
Congresses as Topic/history , DNA, Recombinant/history , Genetic Engineering/history , Research Personnel/organization & administration , Research/standards , Safety/standards , Social Control, Formal , Algorithms , Artificial Intelligence , California , Congresses as Topic/trends , Ethics, Research , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Research/trends , Research Personnel/ethics , Safety/history , Synthetic BiologySubject(s)
Accidents, Aviation/history , Accidents, Aviation/prevention & control , Accidents, Traffic/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Automobiles/history , Aviation/history , Safety/history , Automobiles/standards , Aviation/standards , History, 20th Century , Humans , Male , Seat BeltsSubject(s)
Disabled Persons/history , Employment/history , Industry/history , History, 20th Century , Humans , Safety/history , WorkforceABSTRACT
Traffic safety, once neglected within the larger history of the automobile in the United States, has finally been getting the attention it always deserved. Nevertheless, historians still sometimes misappraise traffic safety in one era by the standards of another. Ahistorical assumptions have contributed to misinterpretations-for example, that Americans of the 1920s were extraordinarily tolerant of traffic casualties because they did not respond to them as more recent traffic-safety paradigms would prescribe. As a corrective, four paradigms, approximately sequential, are proposed: Safety First, Control, Crashworthiness, and Responsibility. Historians are invited to borrow, modify, or replace them, and to consider their applicability to other countries. Whether these particular paradigms survive review or not, historians who are alert to safety paradigms will produce more reliable scholarship on the history of traffic safety.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/history , Automobile Driving , Safety/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , History, 20th Century , Humans , United StatesABSTRACT
The introduction of cyclists' "danger boards" in the United Kingdom in the 1880s established a new form of road sign aimed at private, mechanized transport that redefined ideas of safety on the road. This article explores the implications of this for established road users. In particular it considers the transfer of responsibility for erecting signs from private clubs to the state in the context of cycling's eclipse by motoring in the early twentieth century. It uses the design development of road signs as a marker of changing power structures in road use.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/history , Automobile Driving , Bicycling/history , Safety/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Dangerous Behavior , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Humans , Risk Assessment , United KingdomABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to investigate, through a case study from the city of Turin, the reaction to the arrival of bicycles and automobiles in Italy. It focuses on the early years of bicycle and automobile use, using municipal council minutes, local newspapers, and satirical magazines as sources. The introduction of velocipedes and cars disrupted the traditional use of roads as public spaces, generating protests against the new transport devices, especially with regard to safety concerns resulting from the transgression of traditional uses of urban streets, the speed of vehicles, and the anonymity of riders and drivers.
Subject(s)
Automobile Driving , Bicycling/history , Safety/history , History, 19th Century , History, 20th Century , Humans , ItalyABSTRACT
The slogan "taking the problem to the people" nicely summarizes U.S. traffic safety campaigns of the 1950s. It refers to the goal of awareness and self-discipline for drivers through education and law enforcement. A detailed analysis of the campaigns, however, shows a subtler objective of the motor interests that promoted it. They wanted to overcome political indifference through a civic mobilization of drivers as citizens, persuading drivers to lobby for traffic control. The analysis of their efforts leads us to question the role-or lack of role-of politicians in scientific and technological controversies.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/history , Automobile Driving , Politics , Public Relations , Safety/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Automobile Driving/education , History, 20th Century , Humans , Law Enforcement/history , Lobbying , United StatesABSTRACT
After World War I, automobile ownership became a mass phenomenon in Belgium, as in most other industrialized countries. Unfortunately, road-casualty figures soon followed. By the mid-1930s, traffic accidents had become the main cause of accidental deaths. There was clearly a need for a renewed road-safety policy. Public authorities in Belgium, however, were suspiciously reluctant to take new measures. While there was a public outcry for more severe regulation of motorized traffic and several MPs backed bills to this effect, motoring associations lobbied against traffic legislation reforms. In order to understand the Belgian government's hesitation, this article looks at the key strategies of the actors involved in the decision-making process concerning traffic policy. Such strategies included, among others: the creation of detailed traffic-accident statistics, revision of traffic legislation, and support for mass traffic-education campaigns. Eventually, public officials stepped in and created a new technocratic traffic regime in the 1930s, yet their prime concern was not road-user safety, but the efficiency of traffic streams.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/history , Automobile Driving , Government Regulation/history , Public Policy/history , Safety/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , Belgium , History, 20th Century , HumansABSTRACT
This article explores the attempts in the United States in the 1970s to implement a new paradigm for automobile safety-crashworthiness, the idea that automobile passengers should be protected in the event of a crash. A large number of strategies were proposed, including air bags, seatbelt modifications, mandatory belt-use laws, and ignition interlocks. Many of these did not initially come to fruition, but they did give the automobile safety community a chance to experiment with different ways of distributing responsibilities between automobile occupants, automobile manufacturers, and, to a lesser extent, government agencies. These experiments helped pave the way for the successful implementation of a number of new strategies in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic/history , Automobiles/history , Government Regulation/history , Public Policy/history , Safety/history , Accidents, Traffic/prevention & control , History, 20th Century , United StatesABSTRACT
This article is among the first historical considerations of road safety in Africa. It argues that race and class, as colonial dualisms, analytically frame two defining moments in the development of African automobility and its infrastructure-"Africanization" in the first decade of Kenya's political independence from Britain, 1963-75, and democratization in postapartheid South Africa. We argue that recent road safety interventions in both countries exemplify an "epidemiological turn" influenced by public health constructions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. African states' framing of road safety in behaviorist terms has obscured larger debates around redressing the historical legacies of racialized access to roads and the technopolitics of African automobility. Civic involvement in road safety initiatives has tended to be limited, although the specter of road carnage has entered into the public imagination, largely through the death of high profile Africans. However, some African road users continue to pursue alternative, and often culturally embedded, strategies to mitigate the dangers posed by life "on the road."