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Energy Transfer Theory
*"A Note Concerning Accident Theory and Research With Special Reference to Motor Vehicle Accidents," 1963, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 107, 635-646.
*"The Changing Approach to the Epidemiology, Prevention and Amelioration of Trauma: The Transition to Approaches Etiologically Rather Than Descriptively Based," 1968, American Journal of Public Health, 58(8), 1431-1438.
*"Energy Damage and the 10 Countermeasure Strategies," 1973, The Journal of Trauma, 13(4), 321-331.
Loss control professionals who work to prevent personal injury, property damage and process interruption are confronted with what appears to be an unfathomable conjunction of engineering, biomechanics, public health, environmental studies, education, training and politics. Zero injury prevention is not likely any time soon. However, continuous incremental reduction, however small, in the frequency and seriousness of personal injury, property damage and process interruption is possible.
A gigantic step in the incremental reduction process was taken when William Haddon Jr. published his energy transfer theory of injury causation in 1963. The key word is reduction. In the seminal 1963 article and his subsequent writings, Haddon never claimed that his insights would eliminate all injuries, damage and interruptions.
Haddon's 1963 article is more than 5,000 words long and from about 350 to 590 words this powerful insight is revealed:
[I]t becomes apparent that all injuries are causally in one of two groups. The first of those comprises all injuries caused by interference with normal whole or local energy exchange....