to be riskier drivers: This point is made explicit in the discussion of the fictional Fred earlier in the chapter, but see, too, P. A. Koushki, S. Y. Ali, and O. AlSaleh, “Road Traffic Violations and Seat Belt Use in Kuwait: Study of Driver Behavior in Motion,” Transportation Research Record, vol. 1640 (1998), pp. 17–22; see also T. B. Dinh-Zarr, D. A. Sleet, R. A. Shults, S. Zaza, R. W. Elder, J. L. Nichols, R. S. Thompson, and D. M. Sosin, “Reviews of Evidence Regarding Interventions to Increase the Use of Safety Belts,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 21, no. 4, Supp. 1 (2001), pp. 48–65, and D. F. Preusser, A. F. Williams, and A. K. Lund, “The Effect of New York’s Seat Belt Use Law on Teenage Drivers,” Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol. 19 (1987), pp. 73–80.
not wearing their belts: Evans, Traffic Safety, op. cit., p. 89.
“frequently get into accidents”: Russell S. Sobel and Todd M. Nesbit, “Automobile Safety Regulation and the Incentive to Drive Recklessly: Evidence from NASCAR,” Southern Economic Journal, vol. 74, no. 1 (2007).
suits and helmets: This point is made by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt in “How Many Lives Did Dale Earnhardt Save?” New York Times, February 19, 2006. They note that if NASCAR drivers had died at the same rate as American drivers in general in a five-year period, fifteen drivers should have died—instead, none did. This raises the interesting point that Earnhardt’s death became something of a spur for greater safety on NASCAR racetracks, where no single death in the general population of drivers seems capable of prompting a similar response.
fatalities by some 25 percent: A. J. McLean, B. N. Fildes, C. J. Kloeden, K. H. Digges, R. W. G. Anderson, V. M. Moore, and D. A. Simpson, “Prevention of Head Injuries to Car Occupants: An Investigation of Interior Padding Options,” Federal Office of Road Safety, Report CR 160, NHMRC Road Accident Research Unit, University of Adelaide and Monash University Accident Research Centre.
seat belts and air bags: Sam Peltzman, “Regulation and the Natural Progress of Opulence,” lecture presented at the American Enterprise Institute, September 8, 2004, AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, Washington, D.C.
Simpson has suggested: Joe Simpson, writing about “super-share ice screws” and other technological innovations, notes that “one would have thought these welcome developments would have made the sport considerably safer. Unfortunately climbers now throw themselves onto ice climbs that would have been unheard-of only a decade ago.” He then draws a comparison to his car, a “rust bucket of a Mini” that “left you with no illusions as to what a small cube of twisted metal it could instantly become if you hit anything.” As a result, he writes, “I drove with a modicum of caution.” From The Beckoning Silence (Seattle: Mountaineers Books, 2006), p. 105.
for more “safety”: The Mount McKinley information comes from a fascinating study by R. Clark and Dwight R. Lee, “Too Safe to Be Safe: Some Implications of Short- and Long-Run Rescue Laffer Curves,” Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 23, no. 2 (Spring 1997), pp. 127–37. It is true that many more people were climbing the mountain by the century’s end, but it is also true that many more climbers were needing to be rescued. In 1976 alone, the study notes, there were thirty-three rescues, one out of every eighteen climbs—almost as many as the total number prior to 1970.
no-pull fatality: Vic Napier, Donald Self, and Carolyn Findlay, “Risk Homeostasis: A Case Study of the Adoption of a Safety Innovation on the Level of Perceived Risk,” paper submitted to the American Society of Business and Behavioral Sciences meeting, Las Vegas, February 22, 2007.
our willingness for risk: O. Adebisi and G. N. Sama, “Influence of Stopped Delay on Driver Gap Acceptance Behavior,” Journal of Transportation Engineering, vol. 3, no. 115 (1989), pp. 305–15.
fatal crashes goes down: Daniel Eisenberg and Kenneth E. Warner, “Effects of Snowfalls on Motor Vehicle Collisions, Injuries, and Fatalities,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 95, no. 1 (January 2005), pp. 120–24.
perfect risk “temperature”: Robertson and Pless, “Does Risk Homeostasis Theory Have Implications for Road Safety,” op. cit.
the lookout for cars: For a Palo Alto report, see Alan Wachtel and Diana Lewiston, “Risk Factors for Bicycle-Motor Vehicle Collisions at Intersections,” ITE Journal, September 1994. See also L. Aultmann-Hall and M. F. Adams. “Sidewalk Bicycling Safety Issues,” Transportation Research Record, no. 1636, 1998, pp. 71–76. For a fascinating and in-depth discussion of bicycle risk and safety issues, see Jeffrey A. Hiles, “Listening to Bike Lanes,” September 1996; retrieved on November 14, 2006, at http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey.hiles/essays/listening/contents.htm.
than those without them): See, for example, Lasse Fridstrom, “The Safety Effect of Studded Tyres in Norwegian Cities,” Nordic Road and Transport Research, no. 1 (2001), as well as Veli-Pekka Kallberg, H. Kanner, T. Makinen, and M. Roine, “Estimation of Effects of Reduced Salting and Decreased Use of Studded Tires on Road Accidents in Winter,” Transportation Research Record, vol. 1533 (1995).
drivers of larger cars: Paul Wasielewski and Leonard Evans, “Do Drivers of Small Cars Take Less Risk in Everyday Driving?,” Risk Analysis, vol. 5, no. 1 (1985), pp. 25–32.
higher speeds and more lanes: D. Walton and J. A. Thomas, “Naturalistic Observations of Driver Hand Positions,” Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behavior, vol. 8 (2005), pp. 229–38.
lower feelings of risk: D. Walton and A. Thomas, “Measuring Perceived Risk: Self-reported and Actual Hand Positions of SUV and Car Drivers,” Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, vol. 10, issue 3 (May 2007).
talking on a cell phone: Lesley Walker, Jonathan Williams, and Konrad Jamrozik, “Unsafe Driving Behaviour and Four Wheel Drive Vehicles: Observational Study,” British Medical Journal, vol. 333, issue 17558 (July 8, 2006), p. 71.
“car in front”: Sten Fossser and Peter Christensen, “Car Age and the Risk of Accidents,” TOI Report 386, Institute of Transport Economics, Norway, 1998.
more than old cars: This was suggested to me in a conversation with Kim Hazelbaker, senior vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, May 19, 2007.
drive it more often: When I asked Leonard Evans, one of the leading authorities on traffic safety in the United States, what kind of car he drove, his answer made an impression on me. “In terms of a certain mind-set I drive a very unsafe car,” he said. “It’s about the least expensive, lightest car that my former employer manufactured: the Pontiac Sunfire.” It is well over a decade old.
and killed in war: Shaoni Bhattacharya, “Global Suicide Toll Exceeds War and Murder,” New Scientist, September 8, 2004.
struck by lightning: John Mueller, “A False Sense of Insecurity,” Regulation, vol. 27, no. 3 (Fall 2004), pp. 42–46.
stricter cell phone laws): Frank McKenna, a professor of psychology at the University of Reading, points out that people have commonly resisted previous traffic and other health safety measures, ranging from wearing seat belts to restricting workplace smoking, on the grounds that they impinge upon “freedoms.” There is also, in public policy, a tendency to avoid legislating behaviors that do not violate John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle”—that is, this thinking maintains that laws should be passed only to “prevent harm to others,” not for the “physical or moral” good of any individual. As McKenna argues, even though drunk driving and not wearing seat belts were once considered legitimate behavior, the social costs of these behaviors, as with workplace smoking, were eventually recognized. This raises the question, however, of why speeding, which can cause “harm to others,” is so widely tolerated. It may be that, as has been argued in this book, people are often simply not aware of their speed, or of the potential risks they are assuming in driving at a high speed. This may help contribute to a perceived lack of “legitimacy” on the part of authorities in trying to mount stricter enforcement campaigns. Police are faced with a well-known quandary: Be too lenient in enforcing strict speed limits, and
drivers’ speeds will creep up; be too strict, and “they risk strain on public acceptability.” McKenna concludes that the current public acceptance of regularly driving above speed limits may at some point look as retrograde as workplace smoking: “It is noted that the perceived legitimacy of action can change considerably over time and interventions that would not be perceived as legitimate at one point in time may be considered uncontroversial at a later point in time.” See Frank P. McKenna, “The Perceived Legitimacy of Intervention: A Key Feature for Road Safety,” AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 2007.
drive rather than fly: “Consequences for Road Traffic Fatalities of the Reduction in Flying Following September 11, 2001,” Michael Sivak and Michael Flannagan, Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behavior, vol. 7, nos. 4–5 (July–September 2004), pp. 301–05.
assigned to counterterrorism: Carl Ingram, “CHP May Get to Hire 270 Officers,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2004, p. B1. In the article, one police officer points out that Timothy McVeigh was caught on a “routine traffic stop.” Eerily enough, Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 participants, was ticketed once for speeding and once for driving without a license; the license he finally got was suspended when he failed to appear in court.
raising speed limits: Elihu D. Richter, Lee S. Friedman, Tamar Berman, and Avraham Rivkind, “Death and Injury from Motor Vehicle Crashes: A Tale of Two Countries,” American Journal of Preventative Medicine, vol. 29, no. 5 (2005), pp. 440–50. The authors implicate several other differences, including the steep rise in ownership of SUVs and other light trucks in the United States in the 1990s, as well as higher rates of driving under the influence of alcohol.
would have been killed: This point was raised in a letter by Leonard Evans in response to the previous article. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, vol. 30, no. 6 (2006), p. 532.
“psychophysical numbing”: D. Fetherstonhaugh, P. Slovic, S. Johnson, and J. Friedrich, “Insensitivity to the Value of Human Life: A Study of Psychophysical Numbing,” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, vol. 14, no. 3 (1997), pp. 282–300.
of a terrible disease: Karen E. Jenni and George Lowenstein, “Explaining the ‘Identifiable Victim Effect,’” Journal of Risk Uncertainty, vol. 14 (1997), pp. 235–37.
only one more child: Paul Slovic, “If I Look at the Mass I Will Never Act: Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” Judgement and Decision Making, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 2007), pp. 1–17.
all who died: One exception to this is found at streetsblog.org, which has tracked fatalities and crashes in the New York metropolitan area.
“dread” and “novelty”: B. Fischhoff, P. Slovic, S. Lichtenstein, S. Read, and B. Combs, “How Safe Is Safe Enough? A Psychometric Study of Attitudes Towards Technological Risks and Benefits,” Policy Sciences, vol. 9 (1978), pp. 127–52.
(like nuclear power): In New York City, an undercurrent of public opinion says that bicycles are “dangerous.” Neighborhoods have fought against the addition of bike lanes for this very reason. Yet one could count the number of people killed by bicycles in New York City each year on one hand, with a few fingers left over, while many times that number of people are killed or severely injured by cars. When I met with Ryan Russo, an engineer with the New York City Department of Transportation, I could not help but hear the echo of several of the reasons why we misperceive risk. “It’s silent and it’s rare,” he told me, when I asked about New Yorkers’ antipathy toward cyclists. “As opposed to cars, which make noise and are prevalent. You don’t see it because it’s smaller, you don’t hear it approach because it’s silent, and you don’t expect it because it’s not prevalent.” A close call with a cyclist, no matter how less dangerous statistically, stands out as the greater risk than a close call with a car, even though—or in fact precisely because—pedestrians are constantly having near-hazardous encounters with turning cars in crosswalks.
seem to be misperceived: A classic case, pointed out by Leonard Evans, is the specter of “vehicle recalls.” Every month or so, the news announces that some particular model of car has a potential defect. These recalls haunt us, raising our hackles with a constant stream of exploding tires and potentially faulty brakes. The cumulative result of this, Evans suggested, is that we may come to feel that the greatest threat to a driver’s safety is the improper functioning of his or her vehicle. “They will say on the news there are ‘no injuries reported,’” Evans said. We may feel relieved; the system works. “But the previous night there might have been a thousand people injured in crashes. And we’re told it’s the recall that is important.”
those killed by lightning): An analysis by AAA found 10,037 incidents of “violent and aggressive driving” between January 1, 1990, and August 31, 1996, that led to the deaths of 218 people. An estimated 37 percent of those cases involved a firearm. Cited by David K. Willis of AAA in Road Rage: Causes and Dangers of Aggressive Driving; Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Surface Interpretation of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, 105th Congress, 1st Session, 1997. As Michael Fumento has pointed out, in the same time span that these 218 “aggressive driving” deaths were registered, some 290,000 people were killed on the road. See Fumento, “‘Road Rage’ vs. Reality,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1998.
than pistol-packing drivers: Traces of the sleeping pill Ambien, not taken as prescribed, have been showing up in the bloodstreams of drivers involved in crashes. See Stephanie Saul, “Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed,” New York Times, March 8, 2006. But many other drugs of the kind that typically warn users not to “operate heavy machinery” while taking them also show up in the bodies of drivers (who apparently forget that cars are heavy machinery); for example, dextromethorphan, a synthetic analogue of codeine that appears frequently in over-the-counter medicines. See Amy Cochems, Patrick Harding, and Laura Liddicoat, “Dextromethorphan in Wisconsin Drivers,” Journal of Analytical Toxicology, vol. 31, no. 4 (May 2007), pp. 227–32.
if they pick the numbers: This phenomenon was described by psychologist Ellen Langer, who called it the “illusion of control.” See E. J. Langer, “The Illusion of Control,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 32, no. 2 (1975), pp. 311–28.
real dangers cars present: Consider, for example, the fact that, in the United States at least, hardly any children walk to school anymore—the figure has dropped from 48 percent in 1969 to under 15 percent in 2001. One perceived reason is “stranger danger.” But abductions, by strangers or family members, the U.S. Department of Justice has noted, make up only 2 percent of violent crimes against juveniles. Riding in the family car, and not “stranger danger,” is the greatest risk to people aged four to thirty-seven in the United States (and many other places). The car is actually a risk before it even leaves the driveway. In 2007, more than two hundred children were killed in the United States in “nontraffic fatalities,” a grim category that includes everything from “backover” incidents (typically in “safe” SUVs) to the hyperthermia of children unintentionally left in cars. For abduction statistics, see D. Finklehor and R. Ormrod, “Kidnapping of Juveniles: Patterns from NIBRS,” Juvenile Justice Bulletin, June 2000. Children’s walk-to-school rates come from Reid Ewing, Christopher V. Forinash, and William Schroeer, “Neighborhood Schools and Sidewalk Connections: What Are the Impacts on Travel Mode Choice and Vehicle Emissions?,” TR News, vol. 237 (March–April 2005). School bus fatality risks are taken from Ann M. Dellinger and Laurie Beck, “How Risky Is the Commute to School,” TR News, vol. 237 (March–April 2005).
more dangerous it is: This information comes from a study by William Lucy, a University of Virginia professor of urban planning. His findings are based on two key mortality indices: chance of being killed by a stranger and risk of being killed in traffic. See Lucy, “Mortality Risk Associated with Leaving Home: Recognizing the Relevance of the Built Environment,” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 93, no. 9 (September 2003), pp. 1564–69.
(roughly 22 mil
es per hour): In 2006, there were 14 traffic fatalities recorded in Bermuda, though that number was set to rise to 20 in 2007. See Tim Smith, “Call for Greater Police Presence to Tackle Road Deaths ‘Epidemic,’” Royal Gazette, November 24, 2007. This is actually quite a high number for a country with a population of some 66,000 (not including the many tourists who visit). Typically, however, 80 percent of these fatalities involve the riders or passengers of motorbikes, and a high percentage of those involve tourists who are either unfamiliar with the roads (or the bikes) or presumably have been drinking. Tourists in Bermuda are estimated to be almost six times at risk for being injured on a motorbike than are local residents. See M. Carey, M. Aitken, “Motorbike Injuries in Bermuda: A Risk for Tourists,” Annals of Emergency Medicine, vol. 28, Issue 4, pp. 424–29. Other studies have shown tourists to be overrepresented in car crashes. See C. Sanford, “Urban Medicine: Threats to Health of Travelers to Developing World Cities,” Journal of Travel Medicine, vol. 11, no. 5 (2004), pp. 313–27. John Adams brought up the Bermuda example in his book Risk and Freedom: The Record of Road Safety (Cardiff: Transport Publishing Projects, 1985), p. 2. He quotes, in turn, Herman Kahn, The Next 200 Years (New York: William Morrow, 1976), p. 168.
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