The Dangerous Illusion That Risk Can Be Offloaded Onto Others

This confidence in central banks raises a pernicious systemic risk.

Do you drive carelessly because your auto is equipped with airbags? Perhaps not. But would you drive more cautiously if you were perched on the front bumper? If even the slightest collision would crush the driver’s legs to pulp, I think it is safe to say we would all drive with a higher awareness of risk and with greater caution.

The faith that airbags and dashboards protect us in all conditions and times is misplaced. If vehicles were truly safe, how is it that 32,700 people lose their lives in vehicle accidents every year in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands of others are injured?

The risk, we are assured, is statistically low: “only” 21 Fatalities per 100,000 Licensed Drivers (practically zero, eh, except that it adds up to 32,700 people killed each year).

What statistics do not adequately describe, of course, is that most of those accidents occured in high-risk settings in which the drivers’ focus and/or ability was impaired, even as they reckoned risk was managed/limited by the equipment, their safe driving record, etc.

In other words, the somewhat inebriated gent who slips behind the wheel on a dark rainy night senses the heightened danger; but reassured by the fact he’s never been in a fatal accident, by his car’s airbags, by the low statistical odds of getting killed, etc., he roars off into the unlit darkness. The odds of an accident in these conditions are much higher than the average listed in statistical abstracts, yet they are glossed over by the apparent “low odds” of the drive ending badly.

This is the Paradox of Risk: the more risk is apparently lowered, the higher the risk we are willing to accept. If the drunk wheeled off into the darkness on a bicycle, he probably wouldn’t get far; he’d more than likely lose his balance and end up scuffed and sore but very much alive in a ditch. The real risks of navigating a dark road while impaired by alcohol are very much exposed on a bicycle.