The Safety of Work Ep.46 Is risk compensation a real thing?
Sep 27, 2020
31:31
We are fortunate to have a few resources we can reference for today’s topic. Please see below for links to the papers we mentioned in our conversation.
Topics:
- Defining risk compensation.
- Risk compensation in road traffic.
- Argument by analogy.
- What causes people to believe in risk compensation.
- Why robust data equals a real effect.
- Practical takeaways.
Quotes:
“...I think this is the sort of phenomenon that causes people to believe in risk compensation.”
“Basically, what they’re saying is, if there was a real effect, it would be robust regardless of how you crunched the data.”
“Just because someone does lots of citing of literature or quotes from scientific literature, doesn’t mean that their interpretation of that literature is rigorous and scientific.”
Resources:
Bicycle Helmets and Risky Behaviour: A Systematic Review
Risk Compensation Literature - The Theory and Evidence
The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation