Are the roads really safer now? Is it only a change in my attitude to risk which makes me feel so much more endangered on the same roads that I rode to school on?Nearholmer wrote: ↑14 Aug 2022, 10:40am There’s a large body of academic literature, supported I would suggest by common-sense observation, which suggests that societal tolerance of avoidable risk is closely related to the level of un-avoidable risk present in that society.
So, if un-avoidable risk, from things like infant mortality, war, incurable disease, punishing physical work, poor sanitation etc, falls, as it has in our society over the past many years, then our societal appetite for avoidable risks, accidents at work, accidents on the road, self-harm through smoking, excessive alcohol etc, also falls. It’s as if we don’t accept avoidable risk poking its head above the background of unavoidable risk.
That I think explains a lot of the difference between attitudes now and even as recently as the 1960s and 1970s, because then unavoidable risks were still reaping a much greater toll than they do now, as visible through the much lower average life expectancy.
You only have to visit a “developing country”, where un-avoidable risk is much higher than in Western Europe to see this in action.
Herein lies part of the cause of a lot of grumpy old men complaining about modern ‘snowflakes’: societal risk appetite changed, and the grumpy old men still have their personal risk appetites calibrated to the halcyon days of their youth. I think Pliny the Elder noted ‘calibration differences’ causing friction between old and young in about AD60, so it’s not a new phenomenon.
Why is the large number of road deaths still tolerated? By the standards of other transport modes it is huge.