When things go badly wrong, especially when there is a significant human, environmental or financial price to pay, there is often a desire to apportion blame and mete out punishment. In the short term, it can help to provide closure for injured or bereaved parties and it can play a part in determining who pays to put things right and clean up. In some cases, it may also serve to ensure that certain individuals are removed from positions of responsibility for which they are not competent. But in a wider sense, all this does not necessarily make it any less likely that the same thing, or something very similar, will happen again. For the long-term benefit of society, it is far more important to understand exactly how and why an accident occurred, in order to take the necessary steps to prevent it happening again. That is why accident investigators go to such great lengths to collect and piece together the tiniest fragments of a crashed vessel.
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