Safety

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Warning signs, such as this one, can improve safety awareness.

Safety is the state of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.

Meanings

"After whiskey driving risky" safety road sign in Ladakh, India
Platform screen doors are primarily used for passenger safety to prevent users from falling down on the tracks.

Etymology

The word 'safety' entered the English language in the 14th century.<ref name="Merriam-Webster" >Template:Cite web</ref> It is derived from Latin Template:Lang, meaning uninjured, in good health, safe.<ref>safety | Etymology of safety by etymonline</ref> via Middle English saufte, from Anglo-French salveté, saufté, from salf safe.<ref name="Merriam-Webster" />

Definitions

The term is used often and in a wide range of contexts. Despite a popular impression that the meaning is well known and universally understood, there is no universally accepted definition. The assumption of common understanding is prevalent in standards, guidelines and dissertations, which do not provide a definition which might ensure that the use of the term in their specific context is unambiguous.<ref name="Raheemy et al 2025" />

Definitions are generally based on community acceptance and understanding, so a given definition is not necessarily inherently better than another, and can illustrate a variety of different perspectives. It can be defined as the absence of risk and adverse incidents, or as the presence of a capability to defend against adverse events and mitigate their effects. The Oxford English Dictioary uses "freedom from danger and risks" and Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes it as "the condition of being safe from undergoing or causing hurt, injury, or loss."<ref name="Raheemy et al 2025" />

Other definitions of safety from the literature include:<ref name="Raheemy et al 2025" />

  • "The preservation of positive value."<ref name="Vandeskog 2024" >Vandeskog, B. (2024) Safety is the preservation of value. Journal of Safety Research, p. S0022437524000185. Available at: Doi: 10.1016/j.jsr.2024.02.004.</ref>
  • "Ability for a system to perform its intended purpose, whilst preventing harm to persons."<ref name="Provan et al 2020" >D.J. Provan, D.D. Woods, S.W. Dekker, A.J. Rae. Safety II professionals: How resilience engineering can transform safety practice Reliab. Eng. Syst. Saf., 195 (2020), Article 106740</ref>
  • "A complex concept often defined by a particular condition. This condition denotes the absence of potential harm, including risks such as injury to individuals or animals, financial loss, or any other form of damage or loss".(Li and Guldenmund 2018, p.95)
  • "The antonym of risk (the safety level is linked to the risk level; a high safety means a low risk and vice versa)".<ref name="SRA 2018" >SRA (2018) Society for Risk Analysis glossary. Available at: https://www.sra.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/SRA-Glossary-FINAL.pdf (Accessed: 3 October 2024)</ref>
  • "Application of hazard control through the workplace, person and system by integrating into the organization sustained actions, accountability and reducing risk to as low as reasonably practicable to mitigate potential injury."<ref name="Balderson 2016" >D. Balderson. A means to provide a safe work environment

Prof. Saf., 61 (5) (2016), pp. 63-68</ref>

  • "Zero harm"<ref name="Balderson 2016" />
  • "The condition where the number of adverse outcomes is as low as possible by trying to make sure things do not go wrong by eliminating the causes of malfunctions and hazards or by containing their effects."<ref name="Hollnagel 2014b" >E. Hollnagel. Safety-I and Safety-II: The past and future of safety management Ashgate Publishing Company (2014)</ref>
  • "Freedom from unacceptable risk" (ISSO/IEC 2014, p.2)
  • "A state of low risk: the lower the risk, the higher the safety." <ref name="Möller et al 2006" >Möller, N., Hansson, S.O. and Peterson, M. (2006) Safety is more than the antonym of risk. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 23(4), pp. 419–432. Available at: Doi: 10.1111/j.1468-5930.2006.00345.x.</ref>
  • "A state in which hazards and conditions leading to physical, psychological or material harm are controlled in order to preserve the health and well-being of individuals and the community."<ref name="Maurice et al 2001" >P. Maurice, M. Lavoie, L. Laflamme, L. Svanström, C. Romer, R. Anderson. Safety and safety promotion: definitions for operational developments Inj. Control Saf. Promot., 8 (4) (2001), pp. 237-240</ref>
  • "The ability of individuals or organizations to deal with risks and hazards so as to avoid damage or losses and yet still achieve their goals." <ref name="Reason 2000" >Reason, J. (2000) Safety paradoxes and safety culture. Injury Control and Safety Promotion, 7(1), pp. 3–14. Available at: Doi: 10.1076/1566-0974(200003)7:1;1-V;FT003.</ref>

As an outcome, safety is an acceptable history of adverse events. As a target, safety involves proactive planning and strategies to minimise risk in a changing environment, while as an ongoing process, safety involves ensuring that people, environment and property will be protected in the current situation, and adverse incidents are mitigated when they occur.<ref name="Raheemy et al 2025" />


Safety is the condition of a "steady state" of an organization or place doing what it is supposed to do. "What it is supposed to do" is defined in terms of public codes and standards, associated architectural and engineering designs, corporate vision and mission statements, and operational plans and personnel policies. For any organization, place, or function, large or small, safety is a normative concept. It complies with situation-specific definitions of what is expected and acceptable.<ref name=Aia2009 />

Using this definition, protection from a home's external threats and protection from its internal structural and equipment failures (see Meanings, above) are not two types of safety but rather two aspects of a home's steady state.

Security is the process or means, physical or human, of delaying, preventing, and otherwise protecting against external or internal, defects, dangers, loss, criminals, and other individuals or actions that threaten, hinder or destroy an organization's "steady state," and deprive it of its intended purpose for being.Template:Cn

Using this generic definition of safety it is possible to specify the elements of a security program.<ref name=Aia2009>Charles G. Oakes, PhD, Blue Ember Technologies, LLC."Safety versus Security in Fire Protection Planning Template:Webarchive,"The American Institute of Architects: Knowledge Communities, May 2009. Retrieved on June 22, 2011.</ref>

Safety terminology

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Limitations

Safety can be limited in relation to some guarantee or a standard of insurance to the quality and unharmful function of an object or organization. It is used in order to ensure that the object or organization will do only what it is meant to do.

It is important to realize that safety is relative. Eliminating all risk, if even possible, would be extremely difficult and very expensive. A safe situation is one where risks of injury or property damage are low and manageable.

When something is called safe, this usually means that it is safe within certain reasonable limits and parameters. For example, a medication may be safe, for most people, under most circumstances, if taken in a certain amount.

A choice motivated by safety may have other, unsafe consequences. For example, frail elderly people are sometimes moved out of their homes and into hospitals or skilled nursing homes with the claim that this will improve the person's safety. The safety provided is that daily medications will be supervised, the person will not need to engage in some potentially risky activities such as climbing stairs or cooking, and if the person falls down, someone there will be able to help the person get back up. However, the end result might be decidedly unsafe, including the dangers of transfer trauma, hospital delirium, elder abuse, hospital-acquired infections, depression, anxiety, and even a desire to die.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Types

There is a distinction between products and situations that meet standards, that are statistically safe, and that merely feel safe. The highway safety community uses these terms:<ref name="TxDOT 1918" />

Normative

Normative safety is achieved when a product or design meets applicable standards and practices for design and construction or manufacture, regardless of the product's actual safety history.<ref name="TxDOT 1918" />

Substantive

Substantive or objective safety occurs when the real-world safety history is favorable, whether or not standards are met.<ref name="TxDOT 1918" /><ref name="Sorensen and Mosslemi 2009" />

Perceived

Perceived or subjective safety refers to the users' level of comfort and perception of risk, without consideration of standards or safety history. For example, traffic signals are perceived as safe, yet under some circumstances, they can increase traffic crashes at an intersection. Traffic roundabouts have a generally favorable safety record<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> yet often make drivers nervous.

Low perceived safety can have costs. For example, after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, many people chose to drive rather than fly, despite the fact that, even counting terrorist attacks, flying is safer than driving. Perceived risk discourages people from walking and bicycling for transportation, enjoyment or exercise, even though the health benefits outweigh the risk of injury.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Perceived safety can drive regulation which increases costs and inconvenience without improving actual safety.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Buchan et al 2022" >Template:Cite journal</ref>

Security

Template:Main Also called social safety or public safety, security addresses the risk of harm due to intentional criminal acts such as assault, burglary or vandalism.Template:Cn

Because of the moral issues involved, security is of higher importance to many people than substantive safety. For example, a death due to murder is considered worse than a death in a car crash, even though in many countries, traffic deaths are more common than homicides.Template:Cn

Operational safety

Operational safety refers to the state in which the risk to life, health, property, or the environment from a system or subsystem in an operational setting is maintained at an acceptable level. Achieving this requires identifying hazards, assessing risks, implementing mitigation measures, and accepting any remaining risk.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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Risks and responses

Template:Main Safety is generally interpreted as implying a real and significant impact on risk of death, injury or damage to property. In response to perceived risks many interventions may be proposed with engineering responses and regulation being two of the most common.Template:Cn

Probably the most common individual response to perceived safety issues is insurance, which compensates for or provides restitution in the case of damage or loss.Template:Cn

System safety and reliability engineering

System safety and reliability engineering is an engineering discipline. Continuous changes in technology, environmental regulation and public safety concerns make the analysis of complex safety-critical systems more and more demanding.Template:Cn

A common fallacy, for example among electrical engineers regarding structure power systems, is that safety issues can be readily deduced.Template:Cn In fact, safety issues have been discovered one by one, over more than a century in the case mentioned, in the work of many thousands of practitioners, and cannot be deduced by a single individual over a few decades. A knowledge of the literature, the standards and custom in a field is a critical part of safety engineering. A combination of theory and track record of practices is involved, and track record indicates some of the areas of theory that are relevant. (In the US, persons with a state license in Professional Engineering in Electrical Engineering are expected to be competent in this regard, the foregoing notwithstanding, but most electrical engineers have no need of the license for their work.)Template:Cn

Safety is often seen as one of a group of related disciplines: quality, reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. (Availability is sometimes not mentioned, on the principle that it is a simple function of reliability and maintainability.) These issues tend to determine the value of any work, and deficits in any of these areas are considered to result in a cost, beyond the cost of addressing the area in the first place; good management is then expected to minimize total cost.Template:Cn

Measures

Safety measures are activities and precautions taken to improve safety, i.e. reduce risk related to human health. Common safety measures include:

  • Chemical analysis
  • Destructive testing of samples
  • Drug testing of employees, etc.
  • Examination of activities by specialists to minimize physical stress or increase productivity
  • Geological surveys to determine whether land or water sources are polluted, how firm the ground is at a potential building site, etc.
  • Government regulation so suppliers know what standards their product is expected to meet.
  • Industry regulation so suppliers know what level of quality is expected. Industry regulation is often imposed to avoid potential government regulation.
  • Instruction manuals explaining how to use a product or perform an activity
  • Instructional videos demonstrating proper use of products
  • Root cause analysis to identify causes of a system failure and correct deficiencies.
  • Internet safety or online safety, is protection of the user's safety from cyber threats or computer crime in general.
  • Periodic evaluations of employees, departments, etc.
  • Physical examinations to determine whether a person has a physical condition that would create a problem.
  • Process safety management is an analytical tool focused on preventing and managing releases of hazardous materials in industrial plants.
  • Safety culture
  • Safety margins/safety factors, for instance, a product rated to never be required to handle more than 100 kg might be designed to fail under at least 200 kg, a safety factor of two. Higher numbers are used in more sensitive applications such as medical or transit safety.
  • Self-imposed regulation of various types.
  • Implementation of standard protocols and procedures so that activities are conducted in a known way.
  • Statements of ethics by industry organizations or an individual company so its employees know what is expected of them.
  • Stress testing subjects a person or product to stresses in excess of those the person or product is designed to handle, to determining the "breaking point".
  • Training of employees, vendors, product users
  • Visual examination for dangerous situations such as emergency exits blocked because they are being used as storage areas.
  • Visual examination for flaws such as cracks, peeling, loose connections.
  • X-ray analysis to see inside a sealed object such as a weld, a cement wall or an airplane outer skin.

Research

Today there are multiple scientific journals focusing on safety research. Among the most popular ones are Safety Science and Journal of Safety Research.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The goal of this research is to identify, understand, and mitigate risks to human health and well-being in various environments. This involves systematically studying hazards, analyzing potential and actual accidents, and developing effective strategies to prevent injuries and fatalities. Safety research aims to create safer products, systems, and practices by incorporating scientific, engineering, and behavioral insights. Ultimately, it seeks to enhance public safety, reduce economic losses, and improve overall quality of life by ensuring that both individuals and communities are better protected from harm.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Standards organizations

Template:Main A number of standards organizations exist that promulgate safety standards. These may be voluntary organizations or government agencies. These agencies first define the safety standards, which they publish in the form of codes. They are also Accreditation Bodies and entitle independent third parties such as testing and certification agencies to inspect and ensure compliance to the standards they defined. For instance, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) formulated a certain number of safety standards in its Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (BPVC) and accredited TÜV Rheinland to provide certification services to guarantee product compliance to the defined safety regulations.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

United States

American National Standards Institute

A major American standards organization is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Usually, members of a particular industry will voluntarily form a committee to study safety issues and propose standards. Those standards are then recommended to ANSI, which reviews and adopts them. Many government regulations require that products sold or used must comply with a particular ANSI standard.

Government agencies

Many government agencies set safety standards for matters under their jurisdiction, such as:

Testing laboratories

Product safety testing, for the United States, is largely controlled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In addition, workplace related products come under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which certifies independent testing companies as Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories (NRTL), see.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

European Union

Institutions

Testing laboratories

The European Commission provides the legal framework, but the different Member States may authorize test laboratories to carry out safety testing.

Other countries

Standards institutions

Testing laboratories

Many countries have national organizations that have accreditation to test and/or submit test reports for safety certification. These are typically referred to as a Notified or Competent Body.

A mug reminds the drinker to be careful.

See also

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References

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Further reading

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