Safety management involves matters of both principle and practice. In accordance with this principle, safety as recommended and required practice has become a corporate part of technology itself. There is a network of rules, standards and certification arrangements to ensure safe performance of technical devices. There are control routines for surveillance of technical and operative capabilities. There are emergency instructions for dangerous situations, and there is a rescue corps that can be mobilised anywhere in the world when accidents occur.
Environmental forces are unsteady and random, however.
Structures and materials have imperfections at all levels, and human control may be lacking. For these reasons technological risk cannot be absolutely eliminated. It may at most be reduced to some acceptable level. This fact leads necessarily to the conclusion that safety must be quantified and risk must be measured. Only then can the acceptable risk levels be explained and understood such that they can be agreed upon.