High-hazard activities depend on rules and procedures designed by system experts to ensure safety. However, gaps exist between planned work and actual work, requiring frontline workers to develop workarounds. Drift to danger, identified by researcher Jens Rasmussen, highlights the migration of organizations toward accidents due to cost pressures and a competitive environment. Major accidents, such as the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, emphasize the normalization of deviance and practical drift. Factors contributing to drift include production pressure, bypassing safety concerns, and poor communication. Without intervention, systems can drift towards catastrophe. The concept of drift into failure is a natural phenomenon that affects all systems and must be actively monitored and managed.
https://risk-engineering.org/concept/Rasmussen-practical-drift