Leo Talks Systems Thinking

Oct 25, 2026 · Fundamentals

How Safe Is Safe Enough? The ALARP Principle for Engineering Risk Trade-offs

This article explains why "zero accidents" is an unworkable safety goal and introduces the ALARP principle—As Low As Reasonably Practicable—as a framework for making defensible risk trade-offs in system design, using examples like emergency stops and input validation to show how safety measures can introduce new risks.