We Take More Risks when We Feel Safe

In 1950, Volvo did something that would change the automobile industry: they introduced the seat belts. The main task of the seat belts was to protect the driver and the other passengers from the car. Needles to say, the initial seat belts were not as the ones which we use today.

The first seat belt created by Volvo was a single strap which was applied over the belly, and as you can imagine, the people from the vehicle got injured because of them. They sustained all sorts of injuries, so the engineers tried something else. They tried to place the seat belt in a diagonal direction, and when they conducted the first test, the head of the dummy was cut off by the seat belt. Nils Bohlin was the man hired by the Swedish company to develop a seat belt which would prove to be both effective and safe. He worked for the aircraft company Saab for a very long time, where he developed ejector seats, so they trusted him with the project. Bohlin realized that his new task will be very different than the one which he had at Saab, because the two activities are very different.

He said that the pilots were willing to wear anything he designed in order to be safer in the sky, but the drivers would not be so cooperative, as a driver would not wear an item which would make the driving experience uncomfortable, regardless of the safety it provided. He did researches in the domain for more than two years, and he finally realized that he best seat belt needs to have a strap across the chest, one across the hips, and a point which would connect them. Soon after the design was completed and tested, Volvo introduced the device which many people still consider to be the greatest safety device ever invented. Soon afterwards all the other car companies started introducing the safety belts. It seems that Bohlin saved hundreds of thousands of lives through his invention. However, there are many who say that the introduction of the seat belts might be one of the reasons why so many car accidents occur.

They acknowledged the fact that it is a great invention, but they said that if it would have not been invented, maybe people would have been more careful with their driving. They might be right, and it seems that most of the people from the scientific community agree with this statement. It seems that we have a certain tolerance for risk, and when we feel less vulnerable, we take more chances. When we are at lower risks, we take higher risks. The process is called “risk compensation”, and all of us are doing it. It seems that this behavior was observed even before of the introduction of the seat belt in cars. When the first gasoline-powered horseless carriages were introduced in England, the people who owned them were advised by the secretary of the national Motor Union of Great Britain and Ireland to trim the edges, so the drivers to be able to see the road better. Willoughby Verner, who was a retired colonel army sent the secretary a letter, telling him that the drivers will go faster if they remove their edges, and that the police encouraged them to go faster because it is perfectly safe.

No one listened to him, and the risk compensation remained unstudied until 1975. That is when Sam Peltzman, who was a University of Chicago economist at the time, posted the results of a research made on the behaviors of the drivers on the road. According to Peltzman, the seat belt managed to save the lives of many people who were in car accidents, but the number of car accidents increased instead of decreasing. As a result, more and more pedestrians lost their lives, while the drivers sustained minor to moderate injuries. A similar study was conducted in 1980 by John Adams of University College London, who reached to the same conclusion as Peltzman: after the introduction of the seat belts, the number of fatalities did not decrease, it remained the same, the only difference being that more cyclist and pedestrians lost their lives instead of drivers. Nowadays the conception about the risk compensation has changed, as it is acknowledged as being real, but it is not known to what extent.

It has been discovered that the risk compensation exists in numerous areas, including the working place, at home, on the playing field, and so on. It seems that when people know that they are being more protected for whatever reasons, they are willing to take more chances, and as a result in most of the cases the number of deaths, or of injuries. For example the people who wear back-support belts will be willing to lift more weight, and the sports players who have better equipment are willing to engage in harder hits. It has also been discovered that people are willing to engage in riskier sexual behaviors, now that the HIV treatment has been enhanced. It seems that we are willing to take higher risks if we know that in case we lose something we are not the ones to blame. The study has been observed on the Wall Street, where the bankers gambled millions of dollars, as they knew that if they would lose it, they would not be held accountable for them. If they would win, they would make lots of money, and the situation was perfectly fine for them. They also reached to the conclusion that the investors, the ones who got to lose everything in case the bankers did not invest in the proper stocks, were willing to invest everything they had, because they felt safe. Ironically enough, the reason why they felt safe was because of the bankers, the very same who did not care about the money they received in order to invest in the proper stocks.

There were many economists who pledged the government not to introduce the $700 billion rescue plan last year, as they knew that such a plan would make the people take even more chances. George Will, one of the economists said that if Chrysler would have not been saved in 1979 by the government, it is very likely that they would not have been in the situation in which they currently are. He is convinced that the company leaders would have been able to manage the company much better than they did, and they would have not destroyed it. The psychologists have reached to the conclusion that we often seek the risks, depending on various situations. They have said that it would be better for us, if we would be willing to take less risks and chances. The theory which is called “risk homeostasis”, was developed by Gerald J.S. Wilde, a psychology professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Wilde said that we analyze the risks at an unconscious level, and when we realize that the risks are pretty low, we increase them, by doing more daring things. As you can imagine, this approach is pretty bad, as it can cause us lots of damage and pain. He said that the only way of making people less willing to take certain chances, would be to change the way in which they see the risks, to make them feel that the risks are very high.

According to numerous psychologists, the best method of making a person respond to something is through praise and not criticism. It is more likely that people will behave better if they know that they will receive something for good behavior, instead of being punished if they do not behave well.  Numerous countries offered certain compensations to the drivers who were not involved in accidents, and the number of accidents from those countries decreased a lot. Anne McCartt,who is  a senior vice president for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, says that this theory is not correct because one will not start driving more recklessly if he buys himself a new car which has airbags. She said that people do not behave in this manner, as they do not take risks on purpose. It seems that this subject is very debatable, and that there are numerous theories about it. More research is needed in the domain in order to find out the real situation.