Some people have probably heard of the theory that is often called risk homeostasis. It suggests that people have a certain level of risk that they are comfortable with, and will consciously or subconsciously adjust their behavior to compensate for various factors, in order to achieve the preferred level of risk.
I propose that we use this to reduce the number of traffic accidents. All passenger vehicles manufactured after a certain date will have the following features:
(1) There shall be no seat belts and no airbags for the driver of the vehicle.
(2) There shall be a metal spike, approximately 4 inches in length, implanted in the center of the steering wheel.
I further propose that it shall be a Class 3 felony to add seat belts or airbags to the driver’s seat of any such vehicle, or to remove the spike from the steering wheel.
Why not drive faster with seat belts on? You have presumably mitigated the cost of the additional speed.
10-15 MPH can easily be a fatal accident when you aren’t wearing a belt. Conversely, race drivers regularly survive wrecks at 100+MPH wrecks because they’re wearing the proper safety equipment.
If placed under a regime such as yours, I’d happily install belts and grind my spike off, then just drive away from any pursuer.
Cars take longer to stop with ABS than without, since the computer(s) allow the wheels to turn so some semblance of steering remains.
Driving closer to the car in front because of ABS would mean that more education of the knucklehead behind the wheel is required. It’s also probably why “citation needed” is appended to the statement in the quote.
I’m guessing the OP is at least a little tongue-in-cheek, but I will point out that the empirical evidence suggests that the introduction of things like seatbelts, airbags, ABS, etc have all lead to massive reductions in auto fatalities. No doubt risk homeostasis is a real thing, but it seems quite clear that in this instance its effect is tiny compared the benefits of the safety equipment.
Risk homeostasis doesn’t enter into it if people don’t have an accurate sense of the risks involved. Given how poorly most humans calculate risk, by far the most likely result of idea of a spike on the steering wheel is a vast increase in impalements and partial impalements. Even if the number of accidents decreased, the severity of the accidents that did happen would vastly increase. The net overall danger would shoot up.
It would make more sense to make people unconsciously think cars are less safe, while holding safety constant (or increasing it, of course). For example, imagine if cars were made to rattle and clunk a little bit, or maybe a tiny wobble here and there. (Consider the sound of a perfectly-safe wooden roller coaster as it clunk-clunk-clunks towards it’s greatest height. Even if you know it’s safe, it can still unnerve you a little.)
Not that I would seriously recommend such a thing. Still, it would be far safer than a spike on the steering wheel, while still causing many people to drive more carefully. The actual number of accidents would either remain about the same or decrease slightly, and the same would be true of the severity of accidents. The net overall danger would either be roughly the same or a little less.
No, a properly designed ABS system stops the car more quickly than most drivers could on typical road surfaces. Yes, they “allow the wheels to turn” but it’s more accurate to think of them as rapidly oscillating the brakes to keep the wheels just on the verge of lockup. Once the wheels lock, you not only lose control but it takes further to stop because sliding friction is usually lower than rolling friction. The exception is that on loose or slippery surfaces like snow or deep gravel locked wheels can sometimes be more effective. I’ve occasionally hit the brakes on what turned out to be an icy road and the rapid on/off cycling of ABS is impressive and far faster than what even a very skilled driver could do, and on dry solid surfaces is the most effective way to stop.
I agree. Not sure that the homeostasis theory is so much a factor as simply the fact that many safety practices require conscious action and are easily ignored if we can convince ourselves that they’re not really necessary, which is a similar but not exactly the same idea – it’s not exactly risk equalization but rather just being stupid and lazy – the same reason that during snowstorms you so often seen four-wheel drive Jeeps and pickups in the ditch while normal cars happily go by.
For instance if you’re in a hurry and the guy in front is going slower than you would like, it’s “natural” to follow closely until you can pass and takes conscious effort not to do so. Likewise every road has a “natural” speed limit range which most good drivers can readily sense, and it’s almost always higher than the posted limit, sometimes much higher – and it can sometimes take real concerted effort to maintain the posted limit. Anyone who has been lost in thought on a smooth wide straight road with a ridiculously low posted limit knows the feeling.
As far as prescription bottles, I keep a Leatherman tool right on the kitchen counter where it’s easily accessible. It has several attachments that make short work of all that childproof nonsense.
If only risky behavior usually had some non-fatal warning zone. For example, one time I was in the car with my wife driving and she rear-ended someone at maybe 10-15 mph- enough to set off the air bags anyway. Since then I have been much less risk-taking when I see the car in front of me getting closer.
But that’s not a valid conclusion from the information provided; to draw that conclusion one would need two fleets both with ABS, and with the drivers believing one set of cabs had ABS and the other did not. And assign the drivers an equal number of times to each fleet.
The problem with that is that you need to react differently to hard braking situations depending on whether or not you’ve got ABS. Just slamming down on a non-ABS system would be bad, but so would pumping the brakes on a system with ABS.
I’m not sure about the Munich study in the wiki article, but in the early days of ABS there were some studies that showed similar things. The conclusion that they reached is that drivers trained to pump the brakes in a skid were still doing it with ABS, which negated any advantage of the system. They also occasionally mistook the system engaging with an uncontrolled skid and would completely unnecessarily let off the brakes. As people got used to the system, though, the expected improvements in safety began to be shown.
