Risk Adaptation

Several years ago I mentioned partially in jest to my sister, at the time an elementary school teacher, that the stock market was doomed.  With all the safety features being implemented on playgrounds and other facilities for children, by the time they reached adulthood they would be too risk averse to want to invest in anything other than guaranteed accounts.  Farewell, stock market and entrepreneurship.

She immediately set me straight.  With padded playgrounds, instead of hanging upside down by their knees from the monkey bars, they were now hanging by one leg.  Reduce the risk; increase the risk taking.

That same idea came up again when I began to see the relationship between automobile safety features and careless driving.  And this is not new.

An article from 2006 tells of Researchers at Purdue, led by a civil engineering professor, that “determined that airbags and antilock braking systems do not reduce the likelihood of accidents or injuries because they may encourage more aggressive driving.”  The feeling back then was that drivers adapt to the new technology giving up some responsibility for safety “by becoming less vigilant.”

By 2012 technology and safety features and enhancements other than air bags and anti-lock braking systems became more common as they migrated to more cars from the luxury brands.  Some of these were vehicle crumple zones, stricter seat belt enforcement, side-impact protection, traction control, and better conceived speed limits.  According to another source, these were “all designed to save lives and make driving a less risky activity. However, despite all these safety measures, road accidents and fatalities have remained constant over the last few decades.”

Traditionally, safety innovations begin at the luxury level and work their way down, but today some of the autonomous vehicle research also contributes to the new technology.  Today we are beginning to see more backup cameras, collision mitigation systems, lane departure warning systems, blind-spot monitors, and drowsiness detection monitors.  Guess what!  A July article from Carfax cites their in-house study finding “that some drivers, especially younger drivers, may come to over rely on car technology safety features rather than basic safe driving habits.”

And just a few weeks later in an article principally about self-driving cars the Seattle Times confirms, “Driver-assist technology that keeps cars in their lanes, maintains a safe distance from other vehicles, warns of unseen traffic and slams the brakes to avoid rear-end crashes are rapidly spreading from luxury cars…But these automated aids aimed at improving safety are having an unintended consequence: They’re degrading driving skills.”  Drivers become lax through over-reliance on newer and newer technology.  Through interviews they confirmed that most drivers agreed that people tend to quickly become so comfortable with the technology that they would pay more attention to it than relying on their own driving skills; for example, listening for the warning chime instead of looking over their shoulder to check the blind spot.  But, of course as in most interviews, it’s always the other guy.

Driving is dangerous.  Better cars and better roads can’t totally change that.  This adaptation behind the wheel is as irresponsible as the grade-schoolers hanging upside-down by one leg, except if they slip they only hurt themselves, not their passengers or others on the road.

It’s also interesting to suppose where else this tendency to over-rely on technology may be leading, places where it's not so obvious because the consequences are subtler, hidden or delayed.