livedarklions

There's no indication in that letter that the authors are actually analyzing ANY data or are in any stage of any study. This letter is exactly what I said it was, a set of unsupported assertions about what will or won't be the cause of future waves.

I'm going to resist a debate over what Peltzman did or didn't claim because I think it's very clear that he originally argued that Highway regulation would not reduce deaths, then sort of backed down from that when it actually did despite his efforts to cook the data. I edited the quote above accordingly.

I didn't twist the authors' point about "bystander effects". They've intertwined the actions of nonvaccinated people to produce a non-disprovable assertion:

"One of the most disturbing features of the Peltzman phenomenon is that it may have a ‘Bystander effect’. Simply observing someone else taking a precaution can potentially increase one’s likelihood of taking a risk. Consequently, people who have not received a COVID-19 vaccine may forgo wearing face coverings and social distancing principles if they realise others are receiving the vaccine.".

Or maybe they're not masking for the same exact reasons they're not getting the vaccine--they're stubborn buttheads.

Sorry, but this is still a " half full vs. half empty" debate.
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Bulette

Back to brass tacks and bicycles: why should your quote say OR, rather than AND?

The safety bicycle encouraged adoption of a riskier mode of travel across a larger population AND that increase was rationalized because fast and inexpensive overland travel was (and is) a desirable outcome (even at the expense of increased risk).

Jeff Neese

It doesn't sound like you actually read the article. It's a very good analogy.

Bulette

Rereading the article was useful for me, and reiterates my major argument throughout this thread:

"Risk compensation makes intuitive sense and can be true to an extent. If you’re driving on a precarious cliff-side road without guardrails, you’d probably drive more cautiously. But some proponents of the idea make a stronger claim: that guardrails cause so much reckless driving that any potential safety benefits of guardrails are offset or even reversed. Under this reasoning, a road with guardrails would cause more accidents than a road without guardrails. Guardrails aren’t helpful; they’re counterproductive."

Since I hadn't taken a stance on the actual OP before: I agree with Mr. Requarth, the Slate author!

livedarklions

Because if it says "AND", all we're saying is that every activity carries with it its own set of risks, and anything that changes the set of activities people participate in will affect a person's overall level of risk (unclear which direction). There's really nothing left of the risk compensation aspect once you do that.

Risk compensation is an argument with ideological antiregulatory underpinnings, and you've been valiant in trying to separate the conceptual baby from the ideological bathwater, but really there was never a baby there.

Please remember the theory started with a failed prediction--that seatbelts would increase highway deaths. It really hasn't gotten any better in its predictive usefulness since then.

Troul 

a helmet can only do so much. If society in general keeps spiraling down the crapper with distracted driving, careless & reckless driving behaviors, poorly maintained surface conditions, pet owners not being responsible & held liable for there animals; there will be a point where the helmet just becomes a "statement" for attention.

Jeff Neese

Hopefully you realize that the paragraph you quoted was the author simply describing the idea of risk compensation, using guardrails as an example. He wasn't saying that it was valid - just the opposite. The basic premise of his article is to debunk that concept. He goes on to say:

"But whenever risk compensation has been subjected to empirical scrutiny, the results are usually ambiguous, or the hypothesis fails spectacularly." So that's what you agree with, right?

I wasn't familiar with any of the data, but intuitively I would lean toward the idea that safety-conscious people are that way in general, and vice versa. So it stands to reason that people who wear helmets are more likely to also be safer riders. Obviously that's not always true, but I can't imagine anyone thinking that just because they're wearing a helmet means they can take more chances while riding.

Bulette

Schrodinger set out to falsify quantum mechanics; ideology can be decoupled from results. Further, separating the baby from the bathwater is exactly what novel research sets out to do. We're asking whether risk compensation is a real human effect (yes) and if this effect warrants adjusting our safety designs to account for it (probably not).


The author flips back and forth. In his conclusion, he seems to accept risk compensation as an individual psychological theory, but argues that its misused in public policy (and this is where I stand in agreement): "For policy decisions, we don’t need to understand the subtleties of individual human psychology. We just need to know if the intervention helps all of us lead safer, better lives." I firmly disagree that when the theory "has been subjected to empirical scrutiny, the results are usually ambiguous, or the hypothesis fails spectacularly". Aside from the fact that this is not a literature review, there is empirical evidence to the contrary, otherwise this theory simply would not have persisted this long.

Most studies that have 'debunked' the Peltzman effect prove only that safer folks use more safety gear. These studies make the critical mistake of using cross sectional designs, rather than interventions (the reasons are usually related to the ethics review board). There are comparatively few studies that actually use before and after data from the same set of individuals.

We can toss the Slate article anyway, according to livedarklions, since it's not research, has no data, and can't be validated. In fact, it's probably worse than the Letters I posted, which was at least written and reviewed by multiple expert epidemiologists.

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Jeff Neese

OK, I don't know if you're pulling our leg with the "tin-foil hat" thing, but if you're serious, wouldn't a do-rag under your helmet be the better way to go?

Jeff Neese

As with so many things, the only thing that can be stated with any certainty is "It depends."

A hundred years ago I was working at Long John Silvers, and we had to cut fish by hand. It was company policy that we had to wear a steel chainmesh glove on our hand. Knives were razor sharp and we had to work quickly. The only time anyone ever got cut was if they didn't use the glove. Did that glove cause us to be less careful? Sure it did - we could afford to be more casual about it, and even look up and talk to someone while we were cutting fish. But that doesn't apply to everything. Wearing a seatbelt doesn't cause us to drive recklessly.

Bulette

The examples of the safety bicycle or the chainmesh cut glove seem so obvious as to make the compensation theory pointless, but as you say, it really depends

I always appreciate pilots for their willingness to discuss crashes as a simple matter of fact. The advent of a consumer airplane with a parachute recovery system was big news (Cirrus SR-20). Those airframes, despite a safety-first design throughout have a troubling legacy; nonetheless, the parachute has definitely saved lives.

"It has been demonstrated in the past that individual pilots are willing to accept varying levels of risk and may even be unaware of the risk they are undertaking. The effect of risk compensation has been well documented in fields other that aviation and it has been demonstrated that humans do in fact alter their behavior in response to perceived safety. Simply put, humans tend to behave more recklessly when they feel safer. Given these points, it is highly probable that some sort of risk compensation may play a part in the decision making of general aviation pilots. ... This research, although limited in sample size, does demonstrate that pilots may, in fact, take on greater risks in an aircraft equipped with a ballistic parachute system."

2010. Hartman et al. Risk Compensation in General Aviation: The Effect of Ballistic Parachute Systems. EIWAC

livedarklions

Last point first--let's see what you actually claimed about the letter--"Researchers have concluded that such behavioral adjustments in risk taking are observable with the public distribution of the vaccine; peer reviewed by a quality journal". Actually, the letter contains no observations and is simply a prediction of what will and will not cause the postulated next wave of the pandemic in the UK. You brought up the peer review, my only point was that it wasn't peer reviewed for the claim you stated it was. The journal is not an epidemiological one and the review was "internal", so I have no idea whether or not that it was reviewed by "multiple expert epidemiologists." In any event, epidemiologists are not experts in psychology, and they are postulating based on an alleged psychological effect. Just as an aside, they also note not engaging in handwashing as being one of the risky behaviors they'd attribute to a risk compensation. I'm pretty sure it became commonly known that handwashing really had no practical effect on the spread of the disease by summer of 2020, so the whole thing is a little odd.

"We're asking whether risk compensation is a real human effect (yes) and if this effect warrants adjusting our safety designs to account for it (probably not)." Labeling something as a "risk compensation" effect is postulating an "attractive nuisance" effect of safety regulation--it's stating that the person doing it will engage in presumably undesirable risk behavior for the sole reason that the presence of a safety precaution gives them a false sense of security. You're begging the really obvious question--how do you operationalize what is or isn't desirable risk taking behavior in an environment where every single activity carries with it its own set of risks, and how do you sort out the motivation and the complicated mix of motivations exhibited by actual people (not theoretical constructs) to determine their mix of motivations? I don't agree it's a proven "real" human effect because the research has largely foundered due to its inability to define these things.

Ultimately, though, I think you have conceded that whether or not the effect exists, it's of no real significance on a practical level. Its study yields no useful predictions.

"Aside from the fact that this is not a literature review, there is empirical evidence to the contrary, otherwise this theory simply would not have persisted this long." That's a complete non sequitur. Its rhetorical usefulness to antiregulation interests is why it's lasted so long in the absence of any real proof That's the point of the Slate article, and you're just begging that question with the quoted assertion.
So, basically we're at a point where the article says "it might or might not exist, but it doesn't matter" and you're saying "it does exist, but it doesn't matter". Not much use in talking about it further, then.

Bulette

That's not at all what I've said. I have said, repeatedly, that the effect is not so large as to discount safety improvements altogether. That doesn't mean it should be ignored, as in the case with Cirrus' parachute -- it had a troubling few years at first. The designers of that airplane have stated that the parachute system was intended to enable risky flights (into known instrument flight conditions and single-engine over water), and the crash reports provided evidence of exactly that behavior manifest. Cirrus' reputation has largely improved in the years since these initial observations -- the solution was individualized pilot training to clarify the useful application of the safety system. That training program was made mandatory on the purchase of the airframe, and is now available free of charge for second-hand purchasers.

Your point about antiregulatory ideology has nothing to do with what I've said, and you reframe my statements in poor form.

How about another example of minutia matters: climate scientists have confirmed that the melting polar ice-caps will result in increased cloud cover over the arctic (because of more exposed surface water exposed for evaporation), which will in turn reduce total solar inputs (and thus reduce temperatures) as well. The effect is small, and will not offset the general trend of a warming arctic. Should we ignore the role of this increased evaporation and cloud cover in an iceless arctic because the effect is small?

livedarklions

For purposes of discussing advocacy and safety in bicycling? Yes, we should ignore it. If our goal was to design a complete model and make predictions on the rate of global warming, we should need to consider it. But cloud cover, temperature, and evaporation are well-defined and quantifiable concepts, not amorphous like human motivation, so I have no reason to think your analogy even makes sense.

"We're asking whether risk compensation is a real human effect (yes) and if this effect warrants adjusting our safety designs to account for it (probably not)." As far as I'm concerned, that ends the value of the discussion for the purposes of this forum. YMMV, but I don't think a global model of human risk assessment and behavior has a whole lot to do with bicycles.

Bulette

These are not well-defined, nor well quantified. If they were, I'd never get unexpectedly wet on a ride, and no one would be actively researching these models (and getting paid upper middle class money to do so).

The largest risk for bicyclists has been well established to be motor vehicle drivers. While in some places, urban design has minimized interactions between cars and bicycles, many other regions of the world (the US and abroad) do not enjoy the luxury of fully separated facilities (and they may never). Risk compensation is an integral factor in street design, and a better understanding of the limits of compensation behavior will only enhance our ability to improve these designs.

Two decades ago, "Share the Road" signs were all the rage; "problem solved", said the advocates. Those signs have since been shown to have an unintended effect on motorists' thinking, as you are probably aware. Today's guidelines prefer "Bicycles may use full lane" signage instead. It amuses me to some extent when people boast that this and that problem are "solved" (whether it be climate models or risk behavior), while literally thousands of the world's greatest minds are hard at work on those same 'solved' problems. Thankfully, I usually only have to interact with these individuals at my leisure.

livedarklions

That's total nonsense. Ironically, you just demonstrated that you don't know what the word "defined" means, and I said "quantifiable", not "quantified". These are variables that can be objectively observed and measured, human motivation is not that. Models work when you can specify the relationship of variables to each other, defining and measuring variables are necessary but not sufficient steps on the way to doing that, and yes, I do think we know and agree on what we mean by evaporation, temperature and cloud cover. You get hit by unexpected rain because our knowledge of the relationships between the variables is not complete and there may or may not be practical issues with their measurement but in principle, one can measure all of them objectively.

The "share the road" story has nothing to do with risk compensation which you've now completely conflated with unintended consequences. and, apparently, problems with ambiguous language on signs.

This conversation hit its sell by date a few posts ago, I'm out.