There Are No Accidents

There Are No Accidents

Author: Jessie Singer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2023-02-28

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1982129689

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A journalist recounts the surprising history of accidents and reveals how they’ve come to define all that’s wrong with America. We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term “accident” itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators. As the rate of accidental death skyrockets in America, the poor and people of color end up bearing the brunt of the violence and blame, while the powerful use the excuse of the “accident” to avoid consequences for their actions. Born of the death of her best friend, and the killer who insisted it was an accident, this book is a moving investigation of the sort of tragedies that are all too common, and all too commonly ignored. In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.


Tennessee Tragedies

Tennessee Tragedies

Author: Allen R. Coggins

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 1572338296

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A one-of-a-kind reference book, Tennessee Tragedies examines a wide variety of disasters that have occurred in the Volunteer State over the past several centuries. Intended for both general readers and emergency management professionals, it covers natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes; technological events such as explosions, transportation wrecks, and structure fires; and societal incidents including labor strikes, political violence, lynchings, and other hate crimes. At the center of the book are descriptive accounts of 150 of the state’s most severe events. These range from smallpox epidemics in the eighteenth century to the epic floods of 1936–37, from the Sultana riverboat disaster of 1865 (the worst inland marine accident in U.S. history) to the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Included as well are stories of plane crashes, train wrecks, droughts, economic panics, and race riots. An extensive chronology provides further details on more than 900 incidents, the most complete listing ever compiled for a single state. The book’s introduction examines topics that include our fascination with such tragedies; major causes of death, injury, and destruction; and the daunting problems of producing accurate accountings of a disaster’s effects, whether in numbers of dead and injured or of economic impact. Among the other features are a comprehensive glossary that defines various technical terms and concepts and tables illustrating earthquake, drought, disease, and tornado intensity scales. A work of great historical interest that brings together for the first time an impressive array of information,Tennessee Tragedies will prove exceptionally useful for those who must respond to inevitable future disasters.


Handbook of Traffic Psychology

Handbook of Traffic Psychology

Author: Bryan E. Porter

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2011-06-22

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 0123819857

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The Handbook of Traffic Psychology covers all key areas of research in this field including theory, applications, methodology and analyses, variables that affect traffic, driver problem behaviors, and countermeasures to reduce risk on roadways. Comprehensive in scope, the methodology section includes case-control studies, self-report instruments and methods, field methods and naturalistic observational techniques, instrumented vehicles and in-car recording techniques, modeling and simulation methods, in vivo methods, clinical assessment, and crash datasets and analyses. Experienced researchers will better understand what methods are most useful for what kinds of studies and students can better understand the myriad of techniques used in this discipline. - Focuses specifically on traffic, as opposed to transport - Covers all key areas of research in traffic psychology including theory, applications, methodology and analyses, variables that affect traffic, driver problem behaviors, and countermeasures to reduce the risk of variables and behavior - Contents include how to conduct traffic research and how to analyze data - Contributors come from more than 10 countries, including US, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Mexico, Australia, Canada, Turkey, France, Finland, Norway, Israel, and South Africa