🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 27 Apr 2002 01:09:31, mike@blackcat..demon..co..uk (Mike 
Dickson) wrote:

: In article <CjZx8.11659$dh5.1012782@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk> kenneth.johnson.NO@SPAMblueyonder.co.uk wrote...
: 
: > 1. You have no baseline for comparison: there is Daz but no Brand X.
: > You do not know how many drivers would have been killed or injured if
: > seatbelts had not been required.
: 
: So what does he suggest - that we all drive without seatbelts for a year
: to keep statisticians happy? Or maybe it would be les unpopular to
: simply say why it could be possible that seatbealts do *not* prevent
: road deaths.

It's a twofold argument:

1) In a given accident, safer cars (seatbelts, for example) reduce the
chance of death.

2) People feel safer in safer cars, and therefore tend to drive a bit 
faster, wilder or worse, and therefore have more or worse accidents.

So the question for any given safety improvement proposed is whether 
the first effect is more or less than the second.

: > Prof Adams believes that this is false.  Drivers actually take extra
: > risk to compensate for the risk that was taken away when they put the
: > seat belt on.
: 
: Then may I suggest Prof Adams has his head up his arse? I would imagine
: that most people don't even realise that they are wearing a seatbelt
: when they are in a car; putting it on is largely an automatic process.
: The idea that we wear seatbelts in order to drive slightly more to the
: incline of 'maniac' just doesn't seem credible.

That's not the argument at all, and the idea of risk compensation is a
very well established and tested one. It's not just the seatbelt, per 
se, it's the whole car environment. The more snuggly strapped in to a 
nice safe thing you feel, the less cautiously you tend to drive.

I occasionally used to drive a friend's 1950's Rover, which had and 
has no seatbelts fitted. Even after several hundred miles I was still 
very much more cautious about driving it than my own belted Herald.

Ian