Review by Booklist Review
More Americans are now dying by accident than ever before, one about every three minutes. More than 170,000 people perish annually from accidents, a number larger than that of deaths from diabetes, stroke, suicide, or terrorism. Moved to write this educational and evocative book by the loss of her best friend, a 22-year-old fatally struck by a car while bicycling, Singer explains why accidents are so unnecessarily commonplace. She researches all kinds, from little and frequent to large and rare, including falls, car collisions, fires, drug overdoses, plane crashes, coal mine explosions, oil spills, and nuclear plant meltdowns. Her discussions of victim-blaming and scapegoating, abuse of power and political failure, the impact of economic inequality and racism, and accountability and prevention are outstanding. Singer dispels myths, including the cognitive bias of attributing accidental deaths largely to "human error." Most accidents occur in familiar settings (home, workplace, roads), she explains, and can be prevented by better design, construction, and management of those places. Singer offers sound and simple recommendations, such as training teenagers how to do CPR, perform the Heimlich maneuver, and administer naloxone as requirements for high-school graduation. "Everything we call an accident is predictable and preventable," Singer summarizes. A brilliant and alarming analysis, imbued with empathy and appropriate rage, of a tragic, far-too-common problem.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Singer debuts with a trenchant study of the root causes of accidents. Noting that there are 173,000 accidental deaths in the U.S. each year, Singer argues that these incidents are the "predictable result of unequal power in every form--physical and systemic." She points out that a car striking a pedestrian inspired such outrage in the early 1920s that drivers were dragged from their cars and beaten by crowds of bystanders, and explains how in response the automobile industry "popularized the idea of 'jaywalking' both as an insult and as law" to redirect blame away from vehicles and their operators. She also describes how the passage of America's first workers' compensation laws in 1911 led corporations to push the idea that "clumsy, irresponsible, or drunk workers" were to blame for accidents. Elsewhere, Singer discusses how "racist planning policies," including the building of highways "straight through Black neighborhoods" in the 1930s and '40s, create hazardous conditions that lead to traffic fatalities and other accidents and contribute to the kind of "racist stigma" that blames Black and Latino victims while absolving whites. Ultimately, Singer advocates for accident prevention policies rooted in the idea that "you cannot prevent human error, but you can control the built environment to prevent injury and death." Lucid and well researched, this is an eye-opening call for rethinking the nature of accidents. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Journalist Singer's work analyzes the increasing incidence of "accidental" deaths and injuries in the United States, as exemplified by the 2006 death of her best friend, who was killed on his bike by a drunk driver. Using current research in human psychology, design and engineering, and accident investigation, Singer argues that "accidents" are created by underlying systemic dangerous conditions (from racism to bad design) that are usually ignored in order to save money or for other reasons (some negligent, some nefarious). Among the subjects she considers are workplace injuries, intentional and unintentional gun violence, and the opioid epidemic and unintentional overdoses. Singer argues for reassessing injuries and death that have been labeled "accidental," in order to broaden our view of these incidents and look at their causes. It is only by reexamination, she reasons, that preventative mindsets will prevail and lasting safety changes will be made. VERDICT A title that manifestly seeks to make people rethink the causes of the accidental deaths and injuries that are on the rise in the U.S. Spanning the genres of business, political science, and public health, Singer's work will challenge readers personally and philosophically.--Laura Hiatt
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The rate of deaths attributed to accident in the U.S. is appalling--and, but for lust for profit, mostly avoidable. "One person dies by accident every three minutes or so in the United States, the deaths appearing unrelated and not particularly worthy of note," writes journalist Singer in this searing, deeply researched account. But is that really so? Not when you consider the fact that Blacks "die in accidental house fires at more than twice the rate of white people," that Native Americans are twice as likely as Whites to die of being hit by cars while walking, that West Virginians are twice as likely as Virginians to die accidentally. Such facts speak to structural conditions that disfavor the poor and marginalized. "Accidents," writes the author, "are not just flukes or freak mishaps--whether or not you die by accident is just a measure of your power, or lack of it. She elaborates: It's possible to slip on a wet floor, a human error, but the fact that the floor has a layer of water on it is a condition. Similarly, "to run an oil tanker aground on a reef is a human error," she asserts, while demanding that tanker pilots work 12-hour shifts is a condition sure to yield error. So it is that pedestrians killed by cars speak to conditions. Speed limits are too high, for example, cars can travel too fast at the driver's discretion, and pedestrian walkways are rare. Furthermore, countless industries resist efforts at structural reform, from slaughterhouses whose lines run so fast that "accidents" are inevitable, to auto manufacturers lobbying against speed regulators, seat belts, and airbags. Many people, Singer argues persuasively, are inclined to see accidents as something to blame on victims instead of looking at deeply entrenched structures of injustice. "If accidents befall the poor because they are poor, and poor people deserve their poverty," she writes, "it follows that the rich deserve their riches as well." An eye-opening, urgent book that demands an end to inequality as a matter of life and death. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
