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Are We Learning from Accidents?: A quandary, a question and a way forward
Book review‘This brilliant book combines deeply personal insights and scholarly work, brought to bear on the important case of the Costa Concordia ship disaster. It's full of riveting stories about shipping, punctuated by cool-headed analyses of mistakes and learning in general. Nippin’s labour of love will make everyone who reads the work a better, more interesting person.’
Lee Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University
Author of Mission Improbable
‘Are we learning from accidents, and if so, how? I can’t think of a better person than Dr Nippin Anand to guide us through these essential questions. Nippin’s work on safety and risk perception in the maritime domain, based on years of contemplation and first-hand insights into the Costa Concordia disaster, will serve to enlighten us all.’
Thomas Davidsen, Head of the Danish Maritime Accident Investigation Board
Anybody genuinely seeking to understand risks from a moral, commercial, reputational, or legal perspective should take the time to reflect on the perspective that Nippin offers us.
Greg Smith, Internationally Acclaimed Lawyer
Author of PaperSafe
About the bookAre we learning from accidents? Dr Nippin Anand's research into the Costa Concordia disaster and his interviews with Captain Schettino suggest not.
The answer to the problem of learning lies not so much in designing fail-safe technologies and user-friendly systems as in questioning our fears, myths, beliefs, rituals, worldviews and imagination about risk and safety.
When we recognise the mythical and non-rational nature of risk and safety beliefs, our focus will shift from counting and controlling hazards towards pathways that make us humble, curious, doubtful and conscious about the human ‘being’. When we begin to accept that humans are fallible, we search for better ways to humanise the risks and relate to people.
Through a lived journey of dissonance, disturbance, learning and change, this book offers an alternative pathway to wisdom in risk intelligence, and a method to tackle risks in an uncertain world.
About the authorDr Nippin Anand specialises in the relevance of culture, belief, myth, and metaphors (language) in the areas of risk, safety and organisational learning.
Nippin is a licensed master mariner (ship captain). He holds a PhD in social sciences and anthropology, a master’s degree in economics and social psychology. Nippin studies mythology, religion, anthropology, spirituality, neurosciences, depth psychology, linguistics, and semiotics (study of signs and symbols) to broaden his understanding of human ‘being’.
Lee Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University
Author of Mission Improbable
‘Are we learning from accidents, and if so, how? I can’t think of a better person than Dr Nippin Anand to guide us through these essential questions. Nippin’s work on safety and risk perception in the maritime domain, based on years of contemplation and first-hand insights into the Costa Concordia disaster, will serve to enlighten us all.’
Thomas Davidsen, Head of the Danish Maritime Accident Investigation Board
Anybody genuinely seeking to understand risks from a moral, commercial, reputational, or legal perspective should take the time to reflect on the perspective that Nippin offers us.
Greg Smith, Internationally Acclaimed Lawyer
Author of PaperSafe
About the bookAre we learning from accidents? Dr Nippin Anand's research into the Costa Concordia disaster and his interviews with Captain Schettino suggest not.
The answer to the problem of learning lies not so much in designing fail-safe technologies and user-friendly systems as in questioning our fears, myths, beliefs, rituals, worldviews and imagination about risk and safety.
When we recognise the mythical and non-rational nature of risk and safety beliefs, our focus will shift from counting and controlling hazards towards pathways that make us humble, curious, doubtful and conscious about the human ‘being’. When we begin to accept that humans are fallible, we search for better ways to humanise the risks and relate to people.
Through a lived journey of dissonance, disturbance, learning and change, this book offers an alternative pathway to wisdom in risk intelligence, and a method to tackle risks in an uncertain world.
About the authorDr Nippin Anand specialises in the relevance of culture, belief, myth, and metaphors (language) in the areas of risk, safety and organisational learning.
Nippin is a licensed master mariner (ship captain). He holds a PhD in social sciences and anthropology, a master’s degree in economics and social psychology. Nippin studies mythology, religion, anthropology, spirituality, neurosciences, depth psychology, linguistics, and semiotics (study of signs and symbols) to broaden his understanding of human ‘being’.
466 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2024
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28 people want to read
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November 8, 2025
I have promised a lengthier review for a friend’s blog, so I’ll keep short here. For this book, I have to thanks Amazon’s bots that highlighted this book, otherwise it would have been difficult to discover it (passing over the desertification of the bookshops created by that business juggernaut…). Anyway, through his own personal experiences, the author brings us to understand how effective learning can actually start. Dipping into a wide variety of social sciences, the author explores which are the actual mechanisms that can unlock (personal) learnings in the aftermath of an accident. There a couple of concepts, that may non sound revolutionary, but we often forget all entrapped in all sorts of different agendas: humans are fallible and we need to reckon our own vulnerability to start the learning process and, the one that I like most, human beings are not human things…my colleagues too often forget about this. Said all these good things about this book, there is, for me, a dissonance with the concept of scapegoating, which I don’t agree with, but, even if I am firm believer of the Restorative Just Culture approach, it’s worthy to spend some more time to explore. Good bibliography, by the way
Displaying 1 of 1 review