there is only one certainty in life - that we will die
everything we do has an element of risk attached to it, whether or not we perceive
it accurately
one of the hardest things to do is to put risk into perspective
for example:
following the Mad Cow Disease scare in UK in the 1990's, eating
meat off the bone was banned, however, the annual mortality rate in
UK from this disease was only 10-20, so let's try to put this in
perspective by seeing how risky everyday activities are at causing
death:
waking up & turning bedside lamp on or alarm off &
getting electrocuted => 30 deaths/yr in UK
falling down stairs => 600 deaths/yr in UK
so why don't we ban stairs in houses??
driving a car:
=> 45,000 deaths/yr in US
400 deaths/yr in Vic, let's assume there are 1 million
drivers who drive an average of 15000km/yr, thus the overall
risk of death driving in Victoria is 0.03 per million km
driven or 0.0004/yr for the avg driver, with the risk being
much higher in high-risk drivers such as 18-25yrs, drink
driving, using mobile phones, speeding, drugs, etc.
the risk of death from ecstasy is small, resulting in fewer than
10-20 deaths/yr in UK, whilst deaths from alcohol are more than a
1000-fold of that, yet the media makes a big deal about ecstasy and
little about the dangers of alcohol.
in little over 100 years, we have managed to reduce the mortality
rates of most of the infectious diseases, maternal mortality, infant
deaths, venereal diseases, murder by 10 to 100 fold, western society has
NEVER been safer, but still, the media make us believe we must live in
fear. Children see 10,000 cases of murder on TV by adolescence, yet few
will see one murder themselves in their life time.
recent research appears to show that we all NEED a certain amount of
risk in our lives to make us feel alive
if we don't take any risk, we don't "live", we all need some
degree of excitement in our lives
the amount of risk we need correlates inversely with cerebral MAO
activity
thus thrill seekers have low levels of MAO activity whilst people with
severe fear of daily activities have high levels
MAO activity increases with age and tends to be higher in females than
males, thus adolescent males tend to be those with the highest need for
risk taking behaviour
indeed, the makers of paroxetine are now marketing it to reduce
shyness in the 13% of the population who have excessive shyness, as it
appears to reduce shyness and increase their level of risk taking
behaviour.
the majority of the population have a moderate degree of need for risk
& tend to obtain the excitement of risk-taking behaviour by proxy -
by watching risky behaviours of TV or in movies
studies of Canadian level train crossings give an example of how
people manage risk:
a particular crossing had poor visibility of trains, but as only
two trains passed each week, 75% of vehicles approached the crossing
at a speed which would have prevented them avoiding a collision with
a train if a train did come
the council then decided to improve visibility somewhat by
removing trees that were obscuring the view.
to their surprise, the vehicles approached the crossing even
faster and so still were not able to avoid a collision!
similarly, whilst the advent of better cars, seat belts, air bags, etc
have decreased road deaths, drivers tend to take even more risky driving
habits bordering on stupidity in some cases