Safety-I and Safety-II: A white paper on the Violations of Aviation Safety Management Systems

Modern aviation safety is saturated in Safety-l and Safety-ll mindsets. When analyzing accidents or incidents, the typical focus of attention is based around analyzing human errors and human failures and many times, never thoroughly investigate process or system design. Many accident investigations are halted the moment it is discovered that a human violated procedure or made an error. In some accident investigations, the placement of blame is alleviated when an obvious manufacturer, mechanical, or other error is noticed. However, the old views of safety are designed to fail most people that are in any safety-sensitive in aviation role such as: pilots, mechanics, cargo loaders, or flight attendants. How organizations and regulators view safety and investigate accidents must shift from the Safety-l and Safety-ll approaches - which violate all 4 components of aviation Safety Management Systems. Safety-lll, provides a systems approach to safety, without the focus of human error or blame, and allows all 4 components of aviation Safety Management Systems to be incorporated when analyzing processes, systems, workflows, and accident investigations.