As it says on the tin, compensating your behaviour due to changes in risk? For example would you walk on a wall that was 2 bricks high any different to one that was 10 feet high? There's an introduction here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
If you think it's real in other aspects of life, do you think it exists in driving too? I'm not advocating a spike in the centre of the steering wheel here, but do you think the widely advertised NCAP 5* rating and dozen airbags makes for a worse driver?
I ride a bicycle, a motorbike, drive an old car and a new car and to come absolutely clean here, I find that my level of attention changes depending what I'm in / on.
Your confessions are welcome here, just between the two of us. Or if you think your might of intelligence can control it, what do you think about all the other weak-willed who let it affect them?
Gareth
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I don't believ in it and I have absolute proof it does not work in a sizeable amount of the population.
I am reminded it does not work by about 50% of the moptorcyclists I see, particularly at weekends and even more so on the Congleton or Leek /to Buxton roads (2 of the 10 worst for fatalities) where most of the motorcyclists (and some car drivers as well) have decided to see how near death they can drive. Some achieve their aims.
madf
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I think weekend bikers are a slightly different situation, they know they are at increased risk and I think this is part of the fun and excitement of riding a bike.
I assumed the OP was refering to the average driver doing a commute, trip to the shops etc.
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I am reminded it does not work by about 50% of the moptorcyclists I see particularly at weekends and even more so on the Congleton or Leek /to Buxton roads
You don't think that if they didn't have full leathers, armour, headlights on, that they'd be slower?
Or as said, that the risk is part of the thrill, in which case we should perhaps treat it differently?
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I do and I believe that the majority of other drivers do as well.
For example, when in the supra with no abs, LSD diff, RWD, no fancy traction control, no air bags etc - I always leave extra room for braking and take bends a bit slower, especially in the wet, this is where it makes a huge difference.
In the Audi with air bags all over the place and ABS, yes I push things a bit further, again especially in the wet.
In fact in the dry I would say I drive them both about the same, for me it's in the wet that makes the difference.
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If you react to safety features in a way that simply restores the degree of risk that you were previously happy to accept, it surely calls into question the point of installing the safety measures?
I would have thought a compromise position made most sense.
It is interesting to reflect however on just how much risk the subject was actually knowingly accepting in the first place. It might be argued that you are not in a position to adjust your actions to take account of new safety measures unless you had fully assessed the risks prior to that.
Most people expect others, especially corporations or governments, to take all concievalbe measures to avoid all risks. Yet observation of their own actions when driving suggest that they personally apply a much lower standard. I am not convinced that most people even know how much risk they are taking, so are incapable of formulating a personal "acceptable" degree of risk. Throwing in a new safety feature simply causes them to shift an already blurred and poorly thought out starting point.
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>If you think it's real in other aspects of life, do you think it exists in driving too
No - Not in the slightest. The reason is this. your 10 feet high wall, gives off lots of signals its dangerous, you can see it is all the time and you know its gonna hurt if you tumble.
Your ABS and Airbags are not. They are not constantly in your eyesight or thoughts saying "hey I am an airbag things will be fine" They get disregarded so hence make no difference to your handling of Risk on the road.
The spike on the wheel is different - you can see the spike all the time, its always in your thoughts.
I can honestly say that my driving has not altered due to airbags or ABS. I can also honestly say that airbags make not a jot of difference. If you have an accident in an airbag infested car its still hurts - a lot - big time.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I can also honestly say that airbags make not a jot of difference. If you have an accident in an airbag infested car its still hurts - a lot - big time.
Do you think everyone else knows this? Bear in mind you can't look at a car advert without them telling you how safe it is, I think there's even a sticker on the back window of the Renault?
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Assessment of risk actually depends on two things: the odds of something bad happening and how bad the consequences might be. Driving is an odd one because the chances of having an accident (even at 100mph) are vanishingly small, but the degree of peril, for oneself and others, is very high. Airbags etc. don't remove the likelihood of an accident, but they do reduce the peril. Humans are on the whole quite bad at assessing overall risk in domestic environments because they respond mostly to their immediate surroundings, in this case the nice, soft, comfortable, safe car interior.
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I personally can't get past the first one, the odds. If the odds of a bad event happening are high, I tend not to perform the action. On the other hand, if I assess the risk of an action as low, I will do it, regardless of the consequences.
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I personally can't get past the first one the odds.
I think that's true of a lot of people. It explains why some people don't wear seatbelts and cut the lawn in bare feet. I know someone who died from the second one, but what are the odds of that?
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in thiscase the nice soft comfortable safe car interior.
Remember the days when one used to see half-assembled lorries being delivered? I haven't seen one for years, but the driver used to sit on a wooden packing case, muffled in overcoats, wooly hat and scarf, presumably wearing goggles.
I wonder how carefully they used to drive then - racing 2 abreast, tailgating each other, flashing lights at cars doing 59.99 mph in the middle lane?
Somehow I suspect not.
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To answer the headline question in its simplest form: yes I do. I might run along the two-brick-high wall, but I'd be much more careful on top of the tall one, for the reason TVM points out.
Do airbags, seat belts and other factors that mitigate the effects of a crash alter my driving? I don't think so (but then I don't even remember the pre-seat belt era, and I've had only one car without at least one airbag.) Why not? Mainly because what I'm afraid of is having an accident: that I or others might get hurt, more or less badly, lies somewhere beyond the initial reasoning that I don't want the inconvenience, expense and embarrassment of crashing in the first place.
So much for 'passive' safety features. But what about something that allowed me to drive faster, or closer to the limits of common sense, than I can at present, without crashing at all? I think ABS has had that effect on some - there's a common misperception that it shortens stopping distances, which seems to make some drivers believe it'll get them out of trouble when they don't leave themselves enough space. OK, I know that one doesn't work - my Volvo may have ABS and EBD and whatever, but it weighs nearly twice as much as my 1989 Escort and still has only four tyres - but who knows what else might?
The current vogue is for automated 'Stability Control', and the claims made for this do worry me. They're always couched in safety-first language - "VSC actively intervenes when it detects that the vehicle is at risk of sliding out of control," to quote Toyota, for example - but the unavoidable implication here is that such systems relieve the driver of some of the responsibility for assessing the conditions and adjusting speed and attitude accordingly. Most drivers, I expect, will scarcely be aware of it - I drove a Verso on a wet road last weekend and didn't realize it had VSC until I read the brochure later - and drive as they otherwise would. But I'd be amazed if some didn't take it as an invitation to drive faster or more recklessly than they otherwise would, expecting the car to get them out of trouble.
What else might there be? The factor that does most to slow me down is not knowing what's just beyond the road I can see. A car with a device that let me see further ahead would be an invitation to drive faster - so I might take the safety dividend in terms of reduced journey times rather than reduced risk.
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..if you react to safety features in a way that simply restores the degree of risk that you were previously happy to accept, it surely calls into
question the point of installing the safety measures?
Indeed. Neatly illustrated by the Canadian railway level crossing conundrum. In many parts of the sparsely populated Canadian hinterland railway crossings have no barriers & relative train frequency/population density is low, this has led to a rather blase attitude to the risks they pose In an effort to cut down on deaths by drivers often 'running' level crossings when visual cues would advise caution, a section of surrounding forest adjacent to a level crossing was cut down to allow drivers to see further up & down track - it was thought this greater safety margin would reduce fatalities. Well it did, for a while. The initial dip in fatality statistics was followed by a gradual increase to previous levels. When analysis of approach speeds was done, the average was seen to have increased - drivers were taking 'advantage' of the increased visibility, but still on average, taking the same risk by driving faster when making the 'can I cross before the train' calculation.
If extrapolated or widened to include many road safety calculations, it does seem almost counterintuitive that, as a species, we don't 'bank' our increase in safety, we apparently, (if Canadians are at all representative on Homo Sapiens in general!) 'spend' it to a constant-ish level & oft times it seems, happy to run a large 'overdraught'!
I was amused somewhat this morning on my weekly Lidl shop (fantastic how quickly you can shop when there's such a marvellous lack of choice btw) pondering the risk question,when I noticed they were selling little rubber bracket-y things that fit on table or work-top corners to stop you banging or snagging yourself. Talk about a world with all the rough edges knocked-off, H&S paradise - but I wonder how we'll compensate for it - maybe leaving boiling pans with handles akimbo or irons left plugged-in perhaps?
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>>NCAP 5* rating and dozen airbags makesfor a worse driver?
No but I think it makes for a worse car because passive safety is being given priority over active safety. Many modern cars feature pillars so thick that they actually impede your vision.
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Thick pillars work the other way actually. Its so obvious there is a blind spot, one actively looks round it more carefully both ways. With a thin pillar one tends to assume it not hiding anything.
Having driven a car with thin pillars, then thick ones, and getting one with thicker still pillars, its not an issue
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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You should be looking round them in any case- their thickness is irrelevant in the scenario you describe. However with thick pillars the chance that a split second out of line of sight will lead to disaster is higher. For example a fast moving motorbike as you join a main road. A child who suddenly steps out, the possibilities are endless.
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>You should be looking round them in any case- their thickness is irrelevant in the scenario you describe
You are wrong. you completely ignored what I was saying. Because you have a thick pillar, you look BOTH ways round the pillar. Its such an obstacle that a much more concious effort is made to look round it. This means because you look BOTH ways round the pillar, and the very act of observing takes longer you have MORE chance of seeing the obstruction.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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In the above, it would be interesting to know if there were any stats. showing the location of damage by model. So, if there was a high figure of damage to front off side wing to say a Fabias then we "could" have a design fault. Note the "could"...
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Of course you look both ways round the pillar, I wasn't suggesting you wouldn't. However as I clearly stated the fact remains the pillar is a blind spot and all the observance in the world isn't going to make any difference in the split second scenarios I'm talking about. Unless of course you have two heads.
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to answer the poster.......i think i do adjust to the risk........for example my tyres at the mo are mostly down to 2mm - 2.5 mm.......in the wet i'm more cautious than i am when they're new or nearly new......i'd much rather be on new ones and am a bit wary at present (but the thought of at least £450 for 4 tyres is making me make them last a bit longer)
same with driving on a road that has just had its' first rain for a while e.g. when you've had a good summer for a number of weeks and then it rains.....the roads then are a nightmare, but how many people toodle on regardless and get caught out because it's so slippery
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There is that re the tyres. I recently got down to 1.7mm on my fronts. (now changed). I was aware the tyres might not be that good in the wet, and hence drove with appropriate care during the new UK monsoon season.
But that is good driving not just risk management. In truth there is very little difference, the traction control light does not flicker and more than it used withe the old wet tyres.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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I think it works - I think there's loads of research to show that when cars get safer people drive faster.
It is interesting to look at theories of driver behaviour.
Wilde (1994) says that drivers have a target risk and that they drive so as to equalise target risk and perceived risk. (risk compensation)
Fuller (2005) says that drivers have a target level of task difficulty and that drivers drive so as to equalise target and perceived levels of task difficulty. (still risk compensation)
Summala says that drivers don't asses risk / task difficulty; rather they aim to drive within a comfort zone and avoid the fear factor which kicks in when task difficulty approaches capability. (no longer risk compensation)
Personally, I think that some drive according to Sumala's 'safety zone' theory, whilst others drive according to theories of risk compensation or task difficulty (probably task difficulty because I don't think people think about risk until they reach the point at which task difficulty = capability).
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I wonder if the change is so gradual that we don't notice it going on. If your car were to suddenly develop an airbag fault or the 2008 crash tests revealed that it was like a wet paper bag in certain side impact collisions, do you think you'd change?
Going from a Cortina with a nice selection of pointy dashboard bits and no crumple zone, to a Sierra with plastic dashboard bits and a decent fist of crash protection, to a Mondeo with an airbag and rigid safety cell happens over 25 years. But what if you were to hop back in a Cortina now, even one with sticky tyres and well sorted suspension?
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thats the point. A 60's car didnt have sticky tyres or well sorted suspension. It did not invoke any feeling of safety. At 70 mph it all got distinctly floaty shakey and nervy. My dads zephyr was like piloting a ship, requiring a pilot, radar and three years plannoing to go round corners.
The truth of the matter is that you are less likely to have an accident, of any kind, now than you were 40 years ago.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Very true, TVM, in that case back to the first example: what if your car suddenly developed an airbag fault and it scored very badly in a new type of crash test?
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Doesent enter the equation. The percieved risk of crashing is what most drivers use as a "risk" factor - not the outcome if you do.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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This is also being put to test outside the vehicle itself - hence the new vogue for roads which deliberately blur the boundaries between pavement and vehicle, or different vehicle lanes.
Seems perverse, but logically they're clearly making the road more dangerous rather than less - but the intention is that it will make drivers so unsure that they drive very cautiously, and hence the overall result is higher safety.
I think this might be a flawed idea. What happens when people become used to the road layout? They'll start driving as they normally do, but now there are no pavements or road markings...
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I think this might be a flawed idea. What happens when people become used to the road layout? They'll start driving as they normally do, but now there are no pavements or road markings...
Yes - it happens. In Holland they put the plants and trees and things in big containers, and move them around.
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TourVanMan TM < Ex RF >
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Not only that but in some places in Netherlands there are no road markings or traffic lights at all and people just have to co-operate with each other. It works very well indeed.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006...l
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Like African cities where there are often no roads let alone road markings... Ambling pedestrians mean the vehicles have to amble sometimes too. Anyone seen driving threateningly in an African market may well suffer instant and severe retaliation from the pedestrian majority, so no one does it.
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