The modern world can be a dangerous place, filled with fast cars, smart phones, drugs and extreme sports. Meanwhile, we humans are as fragile as ever. In fact, after a century of lengthening life span and a decline in injuries and accidental deaths, avoidable life-threatening accidents are on the rise again. The question is - why?
Steve Casner has devoted his career to studying the psychology of safety, and he knows better than most that there's not a safety warning we won't ignore, or a fool-proof device we can't turn into an implement of disaster.
Careful! is a user-guide to our injury-prone minds. It will help us understand why we behave in such contradictory ways by, for example, insisting on fat-free salad dressing but then habitually texting while driving. Casner explains the psychological traps that can lead us to the scene of an accident. Based on years of research and understanding of human behaviour learnt as a research psychologist at NASA, Casner shows how and when injuries happen, so that we learn what we should really be worrying about. Careful! will help keep our fingers attached in the kitchen, our kids afloat at the pool and teenagers safe behind the wheel. It will show us all the ways we can take control of our own safety and get through the day in one piece. As a NASA research psychologist, Casner has spent the past twenty years helping to cut the airline accident rate to a fraction of what it once was. He holds a multidisciplinary PhD that spans psychology, computer science, medicine and the history and philosophy of science. Casner has been published across multiple scientific journals and has received much recent major media attention for his research. Casner is also the author of two textbooks, and is passionate about writing science in engaging, interesting and simple-to-understand ways. He is based in San Francisco. From a leading NASA psychologist comes the perfect user-guide why we are prone doing the stupidest things and how we can learn to avoid becoming our own worst enemies
