In article <Dy7Ne.2831$wb.2478@trndny08>,
Mark & Steven Bornfeld <
[email protected]> wrote:
>[email protected] wrote:
>> IOW, you perceive there is protection from the helmet. Therefore,
>> because of that perceived protection, you engage in an activity you
>> would otherwise avoid, at least sometimes. Briefly, you are giving
>> personal testimony about your risk compensation.
>
> Yes--if you define wearing a helmet as "risk compensation". Of course,
>you wouldn't, but I would. ;-)
Or if you do something with the helmet that you wouldn't do without it,
because of the (perceived) protection that you get from the helmet.
> Of course, there are risks I face every day at home and (especially) in
>the workplace. Yes, I wouldn't pick up a hot pan without a potholder.
>So you may say the potholder permits me to engage in a theoretically
>risky activity. You may, but I reserve the right to call you silly!
How is that silly? If you're picking up a hot pan that you wouldn't pick
up without the potholder, you're compensating for the protection that
the potholder provides by doing something that would be prohibitively
dangerous without it.
What you're missing is that risk compensation isn't inherently a Bad
Thing; if you're correctly assessing the risks involved and the protection
provided by safety equipment, risk compensation is what allows you to
do things that are desirable or important but that would be dangerous
under some conditions - like, say, getting out of bed in the morning.
Would you trust your potholder to protect you if you were picking up, say,
a red-hot horseshoe fresh off of a blacksmith's anvil? Why or why not?
Would it be silly and/or stupid to give the opposite answer?
For an illustration that's on topic here: When I'm riding my bike
at night, I just turn on my lights and proceed to ride the same way
as I would during the day without worrying about not being seen; I'm
compensating for the added safety provided by the lights (people can see
that I'm there because of the lights, even if they can't actually see me
or the bike) by doing something that decreases my safety (not worrying
about getting out of the way of other road users because they might
not know I'm there). Would it be stupid to assume that I was visible
at night without the lights? Would it be silly to stop and pull off
of the road every time a car came by because they might not see me,
even if I had my lights on?
Where risk compensation is a problem is when the perceived extra
safety from something is greater than the actual extra safety, and
the compensation for the perceived extra safety actually puts you at
significant extra risk. If I gave you a thin plastic glove (like the
ones used by food handlers at fast-food restaurants) and told you that it
would protect your hand from the hot pan (and you believed me), would you
go ahead and pick up the pan with it? If you burned your hand doing it,
would you conclude that picking up hot pans is dangerous and therefore
a Bad Thing to do, or that the glove didn't provide the protection
I claimed it would and that something that actually did provide that
protection would make it safe to pick up the pan?
Go read the description of what kind of impact helmets are actually rated
for (you should have no trouble finding references in any of three or
four current threads). After reading it, would you trust that to protect
you from anything you wouldn't be able to walk away from without it?
If not, why are you doing something with the helmet that puts you at
(perceived) risk of serious injury without it?
Once you've read *and* *understood* that last paragraph, and thought
through the consequences of what it says, go back and read this again:
>[email protected] wrote:
>> IOW, you perceive there is protection from the helmet. Therefore,
>> because of that perceived protection, you engage in an activity you
>> would otherwise avoid, at least sometimes. Briefly, you are giving
>> personal testimony about your risk compensation.
and tell us whether it makes sense, and whether your response to it
makes sense.
dave
--
Dave Vandervies
[email protected]
[Y]ou're overlooking the origin of the doctrine, which is inherently based
in mercy, something God has been accused of from time to time, with varying
degrees of justification. --Eric Schwartz in the scary devil monastery