From system to culture — safety by design

IN THE DOCUMENTARY series "Connections",science historian James Burke narrated how the smallest, most overlooked components in modern life could bring entire systems to a halt.

- S RAMADORAI

He recounted how an evening in New York City was paralysed, where traffic froze, elevators stopped, and hospitals stalled, due to a single relay fault in the power grid. It was not just a technical failure; it was a revelation of how fragile and interwoven our dependencies truly are.

Recent incidents such as the Air India flight AI171 crash and the tragic stampedes compel us to acknowledge, with humility and sorrow, the human lives lost, and the pain endured by families. It is in their memory that we must reflect quietly, collectively, and courageously, not just on what failed, but on howwe must respond, learn, and build a safer and more resilient future.

When the world stumbled

History shows us that some of the world's strongest safety systems were born out of tragedy and the courage to confront it.

In 1977, the Tenerife airport disaster in Spain became the deadliest accident in aviation history when two Boeing 747s collided on a foggy runway leading to the death of 583 people. But from that darkness came sweeping reforms, including standardisation of cockpit communication, mandatory English usage in works like Crew Resource Management (CRM), which empowered junior crew to question decisions.Today, these reforms save lives every day in the airspace worldwide. Similarly, in 1994, the MS Estonia ferry disaster in the Baltic Sea became a turning point in marine safety overhauling ship operations across Europe. These were not isolated corrections but were steps towards a safer world through systemic corrections.

A culture of safety