To the Helmet - True Believers who continue to deny or dismiss risk compensation theory - have a look at this...
http://www.i2i.org/article.aspx?ID=602
PERMISSION TO REPRINT this paper in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided full credit is given to the Independence Institute.
excerpts from:
Risk Homeostasis and the Futility of Protecting People from Themselves Dwight Filley
Introduction
There is a growing body of evidence--to be presented in detail in this paper--that points to the surprising conclusion that most coercive measures intended to increase safety either have no effect or an opposite effect. Thus for example, when the government mandates the use of automobile seat belts, fatality rates do not decrease as expected. This counter-intuitive result is consistent across a broad range of governmental attempts to protect people from themselves. Such lack of progress suggests that:
• government regulators may be wasting their time and ours,
• that they are wasting tax money, and
• that other approaches are needed.
Moreover, there is evidence that more effective alternatives exist.
II. Risk Homeostasis Defined
The theory of risk homeostasis predicts that people become accustomed to some acceptable level of risk, and that when they are required to reduce a risk they are exposed to, they will increase other risks until they have re-established the level of risk they have become accustomed to. If they are required to wear seat belts, the evidence suggests they drive faster, pass other cars more dangerously, put on make up, and so on, so as to maintain the level of risk they are comfortable with. In effect, they "consume" the additional safety they are required to have by changing their driving behavior so as to attain other desirable ends.
C. Risk Compensation
People routinely behave more cautiously when they consider themselves at risk. Any rational person would walk more slowly into a strange dark room than she would into the same room with the lights on. We drive more slowly in the rain, and so on. In the parlance of safety engineering, this is known as risk compensation and is not seriously questioned. What is questioned is risk homeostasis, that is, do we completely consume any mandated safety efforts by taking more risks in areas that are not as well controlled?
D. Is it Plausible?
Risk Homeostasis has plausibility. Unlike safety engineers, who dedicate their lives to reducing accidents, people do not usually want to keep their accident rate at the absolute minimum. Indeed, many people voluntarily engage in risky behavior, such as car racing, mountain climbing, some forms of illegal drug taking, hang gliding, rodeo riding, gambling and so on.
Thrill rides in amusement parks seem to get more and more scary. Many more people enjoy risk vicariously, as evidenced by the huge popularity of frightening movies and thriller novels in which the hero narrowly escapes death or some other horrible fate again and again. Video games featuring the risk of wrecking your car or crashing your fighter jet or being killed by a dragon are also hugely popular.
Although some car advertisements promote the safety features of their cars, many car ads feature high speed driving, extreme cornering, flying gravel and other manifestations of obviously risky driving. People enjoy watching sports such as football, boxing and hockey, all of which entail risk.
So people do accept or desire various levels of risk, some wanting more than others. It seems unlikely that simply by requiring an individual to act more safely, this imposition of outside control will change the amount of risk the individual has become accustomed to.
Finally, people optimize, rather than minimize. For example, it is a good idea to save for retirement, but if one minimizes current consumption, she is less content than if she finds some optimal balance between current consumption and saving for retirement. Fatty foods are, well, fattening, but the wise dieter optimizes such consumption (consuming a reasonable amount of fat), rather than going to the inconvenience of eliminating fat altogether. We probably do the same with risk.
E. "But I know I'm Safer with my Seat Belt"
Most people, when confronted with the possibility that safety devices have little effect on safety, react similarly. They believe that they are in fact safer driving in a car that, because of their seat belt, clearly reduces their chance of injury in a collision. You will be safer wearing a seat belt, but only if your driving behavior does not change. There is evidence that, consciously or unconsciously, behavior does change.
