Safety systems in product safety culture

This paper considers the novel area of product safety culture as a variant of safety culture where the focus is on external product safety outcomes (i.e. product failures and hazards) that may affect user wellbeing. This is a different approach to safety culture, which primarily examines worker safety and also process safety, therefore focusing on internal safety outcomes (i.e. worker injuries, days lost at work). There have been several product safety failures that were a result of organisational failings, such as the Takata airbag failure, the Toyota unintended acceleration issue and the Nimrod accident as investigated by Haddon-Cave (2009). This paper considered the aspects of organisational safety culture that caused these incidents and would help prevent future accidents. The question is whether these aspects should constitute product safety culture, and whether there are unique elements that separate product safety culture from worker/process safety culture. Overall, the research examining the dimensions of product safety culture in two interview studies has shown that the findings relate to worker/process safety culture in that they are similar in terms of the existing dimensions. However there is greater emphasis on understanding technical systems within the workplace environment and that product safety culture encourages people to be more morally aware of how their actions may impact the well-being of users.