Exposure
From an interesting post at CSV, via Marginal Revolution:
This phenomenon, where improved safety spurs on greater risk taking, is known as risk compensation, or “risk homeostasis”. Most of us became familiar with the concept from debates over anti-lock brakes (ABS), but its specter has plagued nearly every attempt to improve automotive safety, from seat belts to night vision. Yet almost nothing about risk compensation - its etiology, its prevalence, its significance - is certain.
To prove the phenomenon even exists, one particularly inspired British researcher had volunteers ride bicycles on a closed course, with half the people wearing helmets and proper attire, and the other half clad in their underwear. Graduate students positioned on the sidelines graded the volunteers performance and tallied any unsafe maneuvers. The results showed that the unclothed group practiced much safer driving habits, thereby supporting risk compensation theory - and Britain’s reputation for eccentricity.”
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 7:31 am and is filed under Risk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 6th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Hi Tom, please DO read ‘Death on the Streets’ (isbn 0-948135-46-8) by Dr Robert Davis. It’s a very interesting read that claims the UK Dept of Transport mislead the public on the actual effects of seat belts due to the fact that drivers (after an initial dip in accidents) will risk-compensate. There’s lots of other eye-opening stuff too.
July 8th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
This particular experiment does not prove that “risk compensation” exists. It only establishes that there is a difference in behavior.
It’s possible that the naked-riding behavior is a case of people being more careful than normal. That is, being naked is “spuring” less risky behavior.
July 8th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
The basic point that being naked in public doesn’t really serve as a “control”. It isn’t unreasonable to expect that there would be an associated change in behavior!
August 26th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Although the bike-riding-in-underwear study sounds cute, I haven’t been able to track it down anywhere. If it exists, it hasn’t been published anywhere, so it’s more than a bit suspect.