Interesting.
Risk breaks down into two completely separate areas:
- How likely it is to happen.
- How serious the consequences are likely to be if it does happen.
Most people's risk assessment skills are poorly developed. The typical
western person's upbringing involves two conflicting influences on
their risk assessment:
- A health and safety first, take no risks, take no responsibility
attitude. (School trips banned because they are dangerous; fire
fighters banned from standing on a step ladder to fit a smoke
detector; the balme and litigation culture.)
- Entertainment media that show people surviving improbable or
impossible levels of danger.
The safety first upbringing means that most people have no intuitive
understanding of how to assess risk. They have never faced risk.
The entertainment media thing then paints a misleading image on this
blank canvas: you can survive the most extreme accident, fall, etc., if
only you are brave enough and cool enough.
If you see something happen enough times, it becomes the norm. Most
people spend more time watching TV or playing computerised action games
than they do taking physical exercise.
So then someone gets the chance to take part in a risky activity. They
can react two ways:
- Maintain the safety first at all costs attitude, and think they are
living on the edge when they ride their 21 speed mountainbike along a
level fire road in the forest. They glorify the icons of danger: the
helmet, the "body armour" (does "padding" sound as glamorous?), and
the totems: brands, colours, technical features. They are role
playing.
- Or they can role play the action scenes they have watched a
thousand times - but with no real understanding of the real risks.
It's the second sort we're concerned with. Any fool can get on a
mountain bike and ride it down hill moderately fast. If they have
enough padding, they can even survive a few falls - then exaggerate
them in their memories.
And any fool can ride a mountainbike off a 1 foot drop, or 18 inches,
or 2 feet.
Then they notice two things:
- It wasn't that exciting
- They didn't hurt themselves
To make it more exciting, they try a bigger drop, or a faster drop.
They try to recreate the adrenaline rush, and it's never quite as good
as they hoped.
But because they've never fallen badly before, by inductive reasoning,
they sort of assume they'll never fall. Until they do.
But a unicyclist or a scuba diver has to do a lot of work to earn each
step of his or her way. Riding a unicycle is a few hours' hard work,
and there will be some falls along the way, and you will probably hurt
yourself just enough to learn respect. then freemounting is a few
hours' more work. And idling is. And so is your first mile long ride.
And so on.
In bicycling, you can go from complete novice to appearing to be in
control at moderately high speed on the smae day.
On a unicycle, you earn every bit of your skill, and appreciate it
more.
I think that there is a double effect here:
- It takes a certain personality type to have the determination to
learn to unicycle. They will generally have a better "attitude" to
risk.
- Unicycling itself teaches you to assess risk, because there are so
many falls and knocks along the way.
Some rock climbers are safety fetishists, and enjoy the risk management
(look at all this equipment) as much as the climbing. It is an arcane
mystery, and men like arcane mysteries that involve shiny bits of metal
and "rituals".
Other rock climbers are gung ho. Free climbers who do short but
extreme climbs. Many years ago, I was interested in rock climbing. I
remember reading in High (the BMC magazine) about a bloke (Ron
Fawcett?) who had broken every major bone in his body several times in
his climbing career. he was an adrenaline junkie.
--
Mikefule
I don't know what hurts most when I ride my uni: my left leg, my right
leg, or something in between.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mikefule's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/879
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/14446
Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.usenet.com
