On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 19:25:08 +0100, Mike Sales scrawled: ) I think you have put your finger on it.
The answer is Risk Compensation, or ) Risk Homeostasis. I believe that we do change our behaviour
according to our ) circumstances. To deny this is to deny our nature.
Yeah, I can see that. I think this may be true for the sum total of cyclists.
But to play the statistics game and assume that a helmet can do a *u.r.c* denizen (on average) no
good because it does the average cyclist no good: surely that denies the fact that we are /not/
average cyclists here? I hope nobody here is insulted if I suggest that we're nowhere near the
centre of the bell curve. Although I don't have the stats to back it up, then I think we here would
be the more considerate subset of cyclists. As such, we are unlikely to buy helmets, with the
intention of increasing safety, and then to start cycling less safe because of them.
But maybe as you say this is a largely unconscious, or at least unconscienced, thing, though. Like
the push-pull effect that means that in some cities cyclists will just "get away with" less legal
manoeuvres than in others because one develops a feel for the mean traffic flow around you. Once you
know the environment then you simply adapt. Hum. I don't know how well that adaptation occurs.
(Perhaps, then - if you'll permit gross rationalization after the fact - the advantage of helmets is
that, without decreasing safety, they allow a cyclist to cycle in a more convenient way, in a busy,
aggressive environment! They permit cyclists to conscience less safe actions while keeping the mean
safety level constant...!)
) Unless you believe that you cannot possibly cycle any more safely, ) because your riding is
perfect. I think that our behaviour in the ) rapidly changing circumstances we meet with on the road
is only partly ) under our concious control.
That's true, but I'd also say that I find it hard to consider something as far removed from
intellect as a cycling helmet altering my intuitive behaviour: I feel that as a safety gadget it's
too intellectualized and would only alter my considered, willed behaviour. Example: if I were a car
driver, I don't think that the fact that I was insured for first-party damages would make me more
intuitively reckless. It might affect my deliberate behaviour, but I find it hard to see my
"subconscious" (bleah) making the connection. An insurance policy is more abstracted than a helmet,
but maybe that's a point against intuitive risk homeostasis..
Did the wearing of helmets by miners, or builders, produce the same homeostatic effect? Or are
such professions so highly regulated already that they don't have enough leeway to shift the risk
bubble around?
) If you want to discuss it here I would be happy to oblige. Though you ) may, since you seem to
dislike David Damerel's posts, find the you consider ) mine too as unreasonable.
Not at all. You at least admit other points of view without belittling them. Many thanks 🙂
J-P
--
We were doomed from the start Reading too much Dostoevsky has made me flip
