There Are No Accidents

One of the best and most thought provoking books that completely changed the ways I've viewed daily tragedies

I think this is the first time non-fiction has made me cry.

Timely, lucid, accessible, comprehensive, humane, compassionate, actionable—everyone should read this, particularly those who work in planning and policy.

Select quotes:

“More than a synonym for a traffic crash or a surprise pregnancy, ‘accident' is a euphemism for ‘nothing to see here.'” (p. 2)

“One in twenty-four people in the United States will die by accident. And among wealthy nations, the problem is distinctly American.” (p. 6)

“The people who tell the story are always the powerful ones, and the powerful ones are rarely the victims.” (p. 13)

“Workplace accidents first declined when accidents began to cost employers money, because then, for a corporation, making the workplace safe was cheaper than paying for accidents.” (p. 60)

“Accidents in America come in two sizes, relative to likelihood. Most are small and frequent—a drug overdose, a traffic crash, Some are big and rare—an oil spill, a plane crash.” (p. 66)

“All accidents are systemic, but to understand some of the systems, we will need to zoom far out from one man falling off an oil rig, or another, flush with cash, taking too much of a drug. Racism is a system, and so is stigmatization, and so is the federal infrastructure budget.” (p. 85)

“A speed limit is the perceived safe speed of a road, not the actual risk of traveling that speed on that road.” (p. 95)

“Corporations recall products, from Tylenol to Cheerios, all the time—by government force, or voluntarily, in anticipation of government force. Yet guns never are recalled, because they have a unique privilege: no government agency polices their safety. There are no federal standards for gun design.” (p. 99)

“Society ostracizes stigmatized people for a characteristic that becomes all-encompassing—a single trait dictates how we judge a whole person. And, importantly, when something goes wrong, the stigmatized, because of their flawed character, are blamed.” (p. 109)

“Finding fault in a person smells like justice and feels like a book being closed. It makes sense that we seek it. But failing to prevent the preventable results in a vast and deadly unfairness—and one outcome is the wildly unequal rate at which people are killed by accident because of racism.” (p. 129)

“Every human action in a built environment is a product of that environment.” (p. 131)

“We need to see accidents from the perspective of those involved, and we especially need to see accidents from the perspective of those harmed.” (p. 131)

“In 2019, on average, U.S. drivers killed twenty-one pedestrians every day. Disproportionately, the dead were Latino, Black, and Indigenous. The rate of accidental pedestrian death is 87 percent higher for Latino people, 93 percent higher for Black people, and 171 percent higher for Indigenous people than it is for white people. Black people are more likely to be found at fault walking in the street, less likely to be offered justice if killed there, and more likely to be killed there.” (p. 138)

“Throughout history, when the economy was booming, accidental death also peaked. Nationwide, more income inequality means more accidental death.” (p. 155)

“Whether we live or die by accident is an economic policy decision.” (p. 156)

“We can pay the cost to avoid an accident or pay more for the consequences after an accident—but because we consider these accidents, we rarely do the math.” (p. 156)

“Economic geography so strongly affects accidental death rates that people who live in poverty in rich places live longer than equally poor people who live in poor places. Wealth is a risk insulator and poverty is a risk amplifier.” (p. 168)

“One of the reasons that we don't spend money to protect people from accidents is the same reason that many Americans blame poor people for their poverty: the human error explanation absolves us of the responsibility. But blaming human error is also a well-documented cognitive bias that helps us see an unjust world as just. This bias—known as the ‘just world fallacy'—helps us feel more comfortable in a cruel world by focusing on individual behavior to explain systemic failures and structural inequality. In particular, we zero in on anything that reinforces the belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. In short, the fallacy is believing that the world is fair.” (p. 169)

“If the people atop the social order believe in poverty as a form of justice, and poor people more often die by accident, then nothing could or should be done about accidents. In fact, by this logic, accidents are good—a righteous punishment for bad actions or weak character.” (p. 171)

“The ability to keep the uncontrollable world at bay is quite a power—which is one reason we blame victims most of all: because the dead cannot contest that power.” (p. 174)

“Researchers have found that people have a strong urge to agree about who is to blame in any given accident—and that when some outspoken accuser presents blame in public, everyone else tends to support that view. Eyewitness statements influence other eyewitness statements so powerfully that hearing whom someone else blames can change your memory of who you thought was to blame.” (p. 179)

“Fixing the problem means there is a problem. Blaming someone means there is no problem at all.” (p. 185)

“The chief consequence of blame is the prevention of prevention. In finding fault with a person, the case of any given accident appears closed.” (p. 185)

“Putting aside blame is the first step to changing the environments that put us at risk.” (p. 188)

“The litigious society is a myth invented by corporations to protect corporations.” (p. 238)

“It is an act of love to demand accountability for the dead. And it takes rage to prevent the same accidents from happening again.” (p. 245)

“Accidents are not a design problem—we know how to design the built environment to prevent death and injury in accidents. And accidents are not a regulatory problem—we know the regulations that will reduce the accidental death toll. Rather, accidents are a political and social problem. To prevent them, we only need the will to redesign our systems, the courage to confront our worst inclinations, and the strength to rein in the powerful who allow accidents to happen.” (p. 250)

“Blame is a food chain. Always look to the top.” (p. 255)

“Every accident is born of overlaid failures.” (p. 255)

“Today, hundreds of thousands of lives, an uncountable number of life-altering injuries, and the threat of immeasurable environmental destruction rest on our acceptance that blaming the individual is best, that bad things happen to bad people, and that somehow personal responsibility will save us all. But seeing accidents for what they are means refusing to accept anything as an accident anymore. Because nothing is an accident. Nothing ever was.” (p. 256)