There Are No Accidents: The Deadly Rise of Injury and Disaster-Who Profits and Who Pays the Price

by Jessie Singer

Overview

A journalist recounts the surprising history of accidents and reveals how they’ve come to define all that’s wrong with America.

We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term “accident” itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators.

As the rate of accidental death skyrockets in America, the poor and people of color end up bearing the brunt of the violence and blame, while the powerful use the excuse of the “accident” to avoid consequences for their actions. Born of the death of her best friend, and the killer who insisted it was an accident, this book is a moving investigation of the sort of tragedies that are all too common, and all too commonly ignored.

In this revelatory book, Singer tracks accidental death in America from turn of the century factories and coal mines to today’s urban highways, rural hospitals, and Superfund sites. Drawing connections between traffic accidents, accidental opioid overdoses, and accidental oil spills, Singer proves that what we call accidents are hardly random. Rather, who lives and dies by an accident in America is defined by money and power. She also presents a variety of actions we can take as individuals and as a society to stem the tide of “accidents”—saving lives and holding the guilty to account.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982129668
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/15/2022
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	635,876
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jessie Singer is a journalist whose writing appears in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, Bloomberg News, BuzzFeed, New York magazine, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She studied journalism at the Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism at New York University, and under the wing of the late investigative journalist Wayne Barrett.

Table of Contents

Introduction Not an Accident 1

Chapter 1 Error 15

Chapter 2 Conditions 45

Chapter 3 Scale 65

Chapter 4 Risk 87

Chapter 5 Stigma 107

Chapter 6 Racism 129

Chapter 7 Money 151

Chapter 8 Blame 173

Chapter 9 Prevention 197

Chapter 10 Accountability 221

Conclusion Accident 247

Acknowledgments 257

Notes 261

Index 325

Editorial Reviews

11/29/2021

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.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] searing, deeply researched account...An eye-opening, urgent book that demands an end to inequality as a matter of life and death.” —Kirkus (starred review)

"Lucid and well researched, this is an eye-opening call for rethinking the nature of accidents." —Publishers Weekly

“A brilliant and alarming analysis, imbued with empathy and appropriate rage, of a tragic, far-too-common problem.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Sometimes a book comes along that changes the way you think about the world. I’m questioning my acceptance of the word 'accident' after reading Jessie Singer’s There Are No Accidents.” —Los Angeles Times

“Richly reported...[a] thoughtful, compelling book” —Washington Monthly

“With deep documentation, Jessie Singer demonstrates how the false culture of ‘accidents’ as ‘unforeseen and unplanned events’ is a convenient cover for corporate crimes, negligence, and sheer greed. Whether on the highways, in the workplaces, or in the marketplaces, Singer illuminates how powerful interests could be acquired in many ways to prevent or mitigate the horrific casualties which now are profitably blamed on their victims. After reading this book, you’ll recoil when you hear the word ‘accident.’” —Ralph Nader

“Provocative and illuminating. Like Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed, There Are No Accidents trains a spotlight on the powerful interests that benefit by framing accidents as the fault of reckless individuals rather than hazardous systems. An important book that deserves a wide readership—and that will make you think twice before ever labeling something an ‘accident’ again.” —Eyal Press, author of Dirty Work and Beautiful Souls

“As a cyclist for nearly four decades, I’ve suffered my share of broken bones and scraped skin, concussion, fear and loathing—all, as Jessie Singer brilliantly shows, were not accidents. I’ve seen it in epidemics, where human actions aid the microbes. And in the floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires I have covered. Singer’s clarion call is spot on: confront the systems and powers that choose blame over prevention.” —Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of I Heard the Sirens Scream

“A furiously researched, lucidly written book. Singer leads us, almost without our realizing it, to consider our own willingness to explain away disastrous events instead of confronting their systemic causes. She persuasively tells her readers that the sooner we quit thinking that way, the better off we will be.” —Christopher Bonanos, city editor of New York magazine and author of Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous

“I’ve been waiting for a book that would confront, head-on, the dauntingly complex, inevitably tragic, and often widely misunderstood nature of unintentional death and injury. With deep research, clearly expressed insight, and proper indignation, Jessie Singer has delivered admirably.” —Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

“As this brilliant book makes clear, death or injury from accidents is very much a function of wealth and power. And if we really learn that fact, we might take the steps necessary to reduce the toll of these traumas.” —Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon

“In this fascinating work, Singer challenges the reader to consider whose deaths are brushed off as ‘accidents,’ which communities suffer the most from ‘accidental’ harm, and who can use ‘It was just an accident!’ as a get- out-of-jail-free card. This essential book will make you angry, and change the way you see the world.” —Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor

From the Publisher

02/01/2022

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

Library Journal

★ 2021-11-16
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.

Kirkus Reviews