Thus, accidents were typically attributed to worker “carelessness.” Even if partly true, this was a dead end in terms of understanding the causes and how to fix

Thus, accidents were typically attributed to worker “carelessness.” Even if partly true, this was a dead end in terms of understanding the causes and how to fix them. It would not survive a modern root-cause or “five whys” analysis. In modern parlance, “systems thinking” was lacking. This way of thinking still appears to be common in US road/street design.