Preventive approaches for the engineering, management, and regulation of modern technology distinguish themselves from their conventional counterparts by using design and decision processes that obtain the desired results while preventing or minimizing undesired effects. The term preventive engineering was coined by the author in 1989, and has since become a term of some importance in Canada.

Through the beginning of the twenty-first century, societies tended to direct technological and economic growth by means of a kind of design and decision-making that may be compared to driving a car by concentrating on its performance as indicated by the instruments on the dashboard and only occasionally glancing out to see where it is heading. The result has been many preventable "collisions" with human life, society, and the biosphere. The metaphor is appropriate because engineers, managers, and regulators make decisions whose consequences fall mostly outside of their domains of expertise...