Computer-related accidental death: an empirical exploration
Donald Mackenzie · Science and Public Policy · 1994
Despite widespread interest in computer system failures, there have been few systematic, empirical studies of computer-related accidents. ‘Risks’ reports in the Association for Computing Machinery's Software Engineering Notes provide a basis for investigating computer-related accidental deaths. The total number of such deaths, world-wide, up until the end of 1992 is estimated to be 1,100 ± 1,000. Physical causes (chiefly electromagnetic interference) appear to be implicated in up to 4% of the deaths for which data were available, while 3% involved software error, and about 92% failures in human-computer interaction.