Risk not Safety

All too often, we - myself included - talk about safety in the sense of what is safe and what is unsafe. But those are rarely the right terms. Few things are truly "safe" i.e. without risk. And what is unsafe is often a matter of personal comfort. To some riding in the street is "unsafe." These kinds of discussions lead to decisions about what is dangerous (i.e. what should be banned) and what is safe. Often things are banned - biking on trails at night for example - because they are deemed less safe than another thing - biking in daylight.

The safety concern is the great go-to excuse for many actions. Many have pointed out that it is used far too often.  "You can't bring your bike in here, it's unsafe" is a constant refrain.

Instead we should be talking about risk. Does a certain activity (not wearing a helmet, running stop signs, taking your bike on the train, etc..) increase your risk or that of others? How much? What is the acceptable amount of risk? Riding a motorcycle is about 20 times riskier (from a fatality per mile standpoint) than driving. Is that too risky? Riding a motorcycle is probably more dangerous than biking on a trail at night without a helmet, so why is the threshold set where it is?

People tend to overreact to Fearsome Risks as this paper points out.

Fearsome risks are those that stimulate strong emotional responses. Such risks, which usually involve high consequences, tend to have low probabilities, since life today is no longer nasty, brutish and short. In the face of a low-probability fearsome risk, people often exaggerate the benefits of preventive, risk-reducing, or ameliorative measures. In both personal life and politics, the result is damaging overreactions to risks. We offer evidence for the phenomenon of probability neglect, failing to distinguish between high and low-probability risks. Action bias is a likely result.

When people ask me if biking to work is scary, I ask them if riding a roller coaster is scary and they usually say 'yes'. But is it dangerous? Or better yet is it more dangerous than your drive to the amusement park was? Probably not.

I'm not sure where the Transportation Risk Threshold should be set (too low and and you won't be able to walk anywhere - walking, per mile, is pretty risky), or how you would measure all the risk components, but I've become increasingly skeptical when the old "unsafe" logic is pulled out for something.

Comments

[guez]

I don't see how the language of "risk" solves the problem. When someone says "unsafe," just substitute "unacceptably risky," because that is certainly what they mean. (Look up "safe" in the dictionary.)

The real problem, as your examples suggest, is that we usually don't have much of idea of the comparative risk (or unsafety) of different behaviors: riding to work vs. driving to work and getting less exercise, consuming mercury in fish vs. not getting the cardiac benefits of fish, etc.

What annoys me about your post, however, is that you seem to have found a way of blowing off any possible limitation of cyclist behavior that is expressed in terms of "safety" based on a semantic quibble.

[Contrarian]

Risk is often measured in terms of costs and benefits. So if you perceive that an activity has zero benefit -- or negative benefit -- than the cost/benefit ratio is unfavorable, regardless of the level of risk.

If you look at situations where the safety card is being played, it's often really the case that people perceive cycling as imposing a negative benefit on them. In their minds, cyclists cause congestion, crowd metro cars, and bring criminals into residential neighborhoods. That's why cycling advocacy has to focus on the benefits of cycling to others, not just cyclists.

[Lee Watkins]

In the USA we overemphasize the effect of individual choices on a person's fate, and neglect the cumulative effect of group dynamics which, while we can accurately model, we can not fully explain.

A change can not effect only one person without resulting in a cascade of similar changes to other people they associate with.

A person who spends a few hours looking at plants will score better on mental health tests, however friends of the test subject will also score slightly better, even though they were not aware that their friend looked at plants. This can be modeled, but it can not be explained.

In another example, it has been found that for every pound a person gains or looses, their best friends will gain or loose a predetermined fraction of that change, regardless even if they live very far away and don't know about this change in their friend's weight. The closer a friend is considered to be, the greater the effect. This is why weight loss can only be an effective treatment when applied as a group strategy that affects the environment under which this group operates.

Bicycle safety statistics will remain the same so long as the environment remains the same, despite individual choices you make. A mandatory helmet law will reduce the number of cyclists, but have little effect on the number of injuries and deaths within a given area. The same number of accidents simply effects a smaller pool of cyclists, hence the odds of an accident having to any given cyclist will increase.

In a nation where huge numbers of people have been encouraged to ride bikes, there will be positive effects on the health of everyone, not just those who ride bikes, and the safety of individual cyclists increases at an exponential rate as the number of cyclists increases, because the number of accidents will hold below a certain baseline level.

[Chris Loos]

I didn't know about 20-to-1 motorcycle fatality statistic. Not what I wanted to hear, given that I sold my car for a scooter last year. Still, its good to know the facts. Gotta be careful out there!

[Washcycle]

Guez,

Thanks for your question, when I wrote this I felt like I wasn't really being clear.

What the use of the term risk does, as opposed to safe is to take it off a binary scale. Safe/unsafe is a very non-technical way of defining things. What is safe? What is unsafe? But risk, that's more like science (the dismal science). Looking at the definition of risk there's this one: " the chance of loss or the perils to the subject matter of an insurance contract ; also : the degree of probability of such loss." That's what I'm talking about. Safe is defined as "free from risk" but when are we ever free from risk?

I'm not "blowing off any possible limitation of cyclist behavior that is expressed in terms of 'safety'"; but I am asking if we should know what that word means when we use it. Some people limit cyclists behavior for safety reasons and some abuse the term unsafe. Even among the former it is fair to ask:

1. What do you mean by 'unsafe'? Can you measure it?
2. At what point is it reasonable to limit another's right to take on risk?

Now, obviously if your behavior forces others to take on risk (because you might harm them, or even they might harm you) then that is unfair to them. But if it's only possible to harm yourself, should the government be able to say "no, sorry, for your own good we're not letting you do that?" They don't really do that in the financial world.

[Eric_W.]

Wow Mr. washcycle, where did you find that 1995 study?!

I might still be accurate but maybe there is something more recent on the subject (have not looked myself). I suspect the ratio has become even more unfavorable.

Consider the consistent sales increases in the years between 1995 and 2006 or so for a company like Harley-Davidson. The people riding these hogs were likely mostly middle-aged men who wanted to relive their youth and engaged in very risky (ultimately unsafe, if I may say so) behavior which often led to accidents involving injury or death.

I really want to read that paper on Fearsome Risk. That sounds fascinating and right on.

On a lighter note: I bought some summer bike jerseys this week. It just seems hard to believe that we will ever be able to wear shorts and short sleeve jerseys again (and in August we will all have completely forgotten how cold 10 degrees Fahrenheit really feel).

[washcycle]

The interwebs of course!

My point wasn't to slam motorcyles, but to point out that it seems odd to allow a high risk activity (whatever that may be and it may not be motorcycling - cave diving and bull-riding are both legal) and ban - or micromanage - a low risk one.

[ibc]

What annoys me about your post, however, is that you seem to have found a way of blowing off any possible limitation of cyclist behavior that is expressed in terms of "safety" based on a semantic quibble.

Or more likely, it's that he's found a way of holding folks to rationally argue their case when attempting to ban behavior they find "unsafe". As opposed to uttering the magic words: "It's common sense!"

My guess is that's where your annoyance springs from.