Unsafe at Any Speed

For World AIDS day, a little traffic report. Not too long ago Time had a piece on roundabouts that mentioned benefits including “a 78% drop in accidents involving injuries” and concluded, “the heightened anxiety people feel in roundabouts makes them drive more carefully and remember that intersections are dangerous places. And as Tom Vanderbilt notes in this summer’s best seller Traffic, ‘The system that makes us more aware of this is actually the safer one.’”

A year before, Discover similarly reported on drops in accidents and injuries for European towns that removed traffic lights and signage. As you’d expect they get deeper into the science of the cause, “risk compensation effect. Basically, it means that animals tend to adjust their behavior to compensate for perceived risk. Applied to traffic, the idea is that people will drive more cautiously if they believe they are in a dangerous environment.”

TMQ at ESPN has discussed the contrast between feeling safe in SUVs vs. their higher fatality rate (about 2/3 of the way down). Risk compensation effect suggests the former may cause the latter.

Moving from driver’s ed to health class, risk compensation effect implies that trumpeting condoms as safe sex is counterproductive (leaving aside the question of whether condom failure rates make such a moniker downright disingenuous). The safer people feel, the more likely they are to engage in risky behavior. And indeed the advent of sex education in schools has been accompanied by increases in STD infections. So on this day that would attempt to make condom use a virtue, don’t forget that you’re in danger any time the rubber meets the road.

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