I submit that on or about Mon, 8 Aug 2005 18:47:15 -0500, the person
known to the court as "johnfoss"
<[email hidden]> made a statement
(<[email hidden]> in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:*Actually what happened was that drivers drove faster and braked
later.*
Quoted message said:Only 31 drivers? Such a tiny number can scarcely prove anything.
The important fact was that it was the same drivers in both cars. The
cars were randomly assigned day by day by the taxi firm.
There are plenty of other studies which show the same thing. Why do
you think people would not respond to perceived safety improvements in
this way? There are so many examples! Faster speeds on corners after
treatment with anti-skid surfaces, increases in third-party fatalities
following seat-belt laws, increases in front passenger deaths in cars
with driver-only airbags...
And there's always the oft-repeated thought experiment: if every car
had a steel spike in the centre of the steering wheel, and no airbag
or seat belt, do you think people would still drive the same?
The core misunderstanding is to assume that risk compensation means
that the intervention is being denounced as ineffective. This is a
straw man. All that's being said is that some (or all or more) of the
protective effect is being consumed as a performance benefit.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:*And that is what risk compensation means: we respond to perceived
changes in safety by taking more risk.*
Quoted message said:I believe it. I would not ride Trials at all without a helmet. It's a
risk I prefer not to take without additional protection. You would seem
to imply that we increase our danger factor by wearing helmets. I do not
believe the studies indicate this.
No, you misunderstand. The fact that you would not do trials without
protective equipment is evidence of risk compensation. What
proportion of the protective effect of the helmet is offset by your
balancing behaviour (great term in a unicycling group!) is going to
vary person by person. Your overall level of risk may be lower, the
same, or higher, but you will still be responding to the perceived
protection through changes in behaviour.
Quoted message said:We may increase our level of risk,
but hopefully this is offset by the added protection.
Key word: hopefully :-)
Quoted message said:All of your quoted
studies seem to reinforce that people may take greater risks, but do not
indicate that they are worse off for doing so.
Nor do they need to be. On the other hand, it shows that you cannot
look at the efficacy of the intervention in isolation from its effect
on a crash happening (which is the point).
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:*Actually I'm here because someone made vague and
unfounded assertions about http://www.cyclehelmets.org, a site
concerned with cycle helmets.*
Quoted message said:Okay. Most of us were talking about whether helmets are a good idea for
unicycles, which is marginally related to the information on your site,
though largely not.
Indeed. As I said once before, most modern cycle helmets are entirely
inappropriate for use on a unicycle (one of Brian Walker's pet peeves
is people wearing cycle helmets when skating or skateboarding).
Quoted message said:I don't know about dissonance. How about annoyance? I have not only been
"told" seat belts save lives, I have been shown it over and over, though
personal and statistical example.
No, you have been "told" and "shown" that seat belts save lives *given
that a crash has occurred*. What this always ignores is the
documented fact (from many countries) that the number of crashes rises
when you make habitually unbelted drivers wear belts. Overall the
fatality rate usually rises slightly, but shifts from drivers to
cyclists and pedestrians. So they save some lives, at the cost of
some others. Whether the two values of "some" are the same is going
to vary form place to place, but as one who mostly cycles instead of
driving it looks bad to me :-)
Here's another one for you: Sweden changed from driving on the left to
driving on the right. You'd expect that would cause a lot of
accidents, but the fatality rate dropped like a stone! And after a
while it returned to normal. Risk compensation is just a term to
describe what we all know: if you think you are at more risk you take
more care.
Quoted message said:You offered some info about this in regards to a study done in England.
Does the same apply universally in other countries?
As far as I can tell, yes. Isles predicted a (?) 2.5%rise in
fatalities based on a study of (?) 14 European countries.
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:*Ah, so you would rather hit your head wearing a helmet than not hit
it at all. Odd.*
Quoted message said:Show me how I can ride unicycles without ever hitting my head at all,
and I'll be more open to your line of reasoning. I choose to ride in the
real world, where I cannot guarantee things will not go wrong.
I've not hit mine yet, but I am still learning!
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Some amount of drivers lives were
saved but you are not sharing this number.
*Approximately zero.*
Quoted message said:Uh oh, you seem to be changing your story. I thought the number of
fatalities stayed the same, but had shifted over to pedestrians and
cyclists.
The number of pedestrian and cyclist deaths is tiny in proportion to
the number of driver deaths. So a 40% increase in cyclist deaths
would be almost invisible among drivers.
Quoted message said:My question, which you are not addressing, was about the
motorists with the seat belts. Either your math is seriously flawed, or
there were less motorist deaths and more pedestrian/cyclist deaths.
The answer is that the number of motorist deaths fell by less than the
increase in pedestrian deaths, but you can't put a finger on it
exactly because of other concurrent changes.
I urge you to read Risk by John Adams, which discusses it in some
detail (it takes most of a chapter, IIRC).
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:*You are evading the issue. You are making a choice for others, based
on t he fact that you are an instructor. But being an instructor (in
anything) does not necessarily confer expertise in safety in that
activity.*
Quoted message said:Correct. In the hypothetical situation where I require helmets for my
unicycle students, I am making a choice, based on whatever factors, that
you might consider ill-informed.
No, it might easily be very well-informed. But the reasoning you gave
was not. That's all.
Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
