[SystemSafety] A small taste of what we're up against

[Dariusz Walter]

The concept of “acceptance of risk” is based on the premise that some risks simply cannot be eliminated, under the assumption that everything safety wise was done So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable (SFAIRP) (under some jurisdictions). 

If we sign up to that premise, then someone must be responsible for the residual risk.

Some interesting points out of this are:
0. I think that act of “accepting risk” should lead down the path of first *sizing up* the responsibility in order to decide whether one should or should not sign up to it, thus fostering positive behaviour.
1.  If these residual risks are insured against, it sure sounds like “passing the buck” of fiscal safety responsibility to the insurer.
2. If the stated SFAIRP argument stands up in court, then according to the law, the effected people are Reasonably Practicable collateral...
3. In either case (point 1 and 2 above), it seems that the company deploying the product would be off the hook, at least financially...
4. I wonder if the law allows for transfer of risk, based on the acquirers acceptance of the producers SFAIRP argument, even if the acquirer was deemed capable of performing that assessment? If not, the act of “risk acceptance” is a misnomer
5. According to the PBL’s exploding apples parable, is the premise of residual risk a misnomer, such that any SFAIRP solution should result in *all* safety risk being eliminated? I interpret elimination of all risk to mean that all possible accident scenarios in the real world connected with the system (including supporting systems) (and not just the subset dreamt up by a safety analyst) have a probability of occurrence of 0.

Best regards,
Dariusz



> On 29 Oct 2018, at 20:53, Paul Sherwood <paul.sherwood at codethink.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 2018-10-29 07:38, Peter Bernard Ladkin wrote:
>>> On 2018-10-29 00:24 , Les Chambers wrote:
>>> The most potent drivers of safe software are:
>>> 1. The skills and motivation of the people writing the code
>>> 2. The processes they use to cooperate
>> Something you will hear often from management specialists is that
>> the most potent driver of safe <anything> is that assurance of safety
>> is a board-level priority,
>> with a specific director whose responsibility it is.
> 
> I'm a board director, attempting at least to **understand** what's involve in assurance of safety. Recently I was asked to sign a document committing my company to acceptance of risks that I could neither mitigate nor cover via insure. When I pushed back, I was told by the document's originating party that "everyone else has signed".
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