NOW we evaluate risk determines whether we view many things in our lives with favour or disfavour. If we do it properly, we protect ourselves. If we do it improperly we either put ourselves in danger, or, at best, worry uselessly.
Unfortunately, there are many examples where people perceive risk to exist to an extent that is out of all proportion to an objective evaluation.
On the other hand, there are many other examples where people calmly tolerate activities that are widely known to be very risky.
Life is a risky business. Every activity you can think of has an associated risk. As you lie in bed asleep, the house can catch fire. When you awake and go down to the kitchen, you may fall down the stairs. As you cook breakfast you may electrocute yourself. As you drive to work you may be involved in a car accident. And so it goes on and on. There is no such thing as zero risk.
The logical way to order our lives as regards risk, therefore, is to analyse our activities in terms of risk versus benefit. We should only carry out activities where benefit outweighs risk, and by a comfortable margin. We make such decisions, often unconsciously, all the time. For example, nobody would deny that cars are dangerous. Nevertheless, the prevalence of cars shows that almost everyone considers their benefits significantly outweigh their risk.
Measurement of risk is difficult in many cases. This might be because an ill effect caused by a particular activity may also result from other activities one is engaged in at the same time, e.g. smoking cigarettes and living in a high radon area.
Apportioning blame in such cases may be difficult. Also, although the mathematics of risk analysis are fairly straightforward, they may initially rely on assumptions that can only be decided on judgment. Such judgments can be a matter for debate.
TO complicate matters further, in addition to risk and benefit, a third factor also enters the reckoning dread, i.e. how much we fear the activity.
For example, there is a substantial risk associated with the car, but how many of us entertain the prospect of going for a drive with dread? On the other hand, although objective, statistics tell us air travel is safer than road travel, many people are afraid of flying. My main preoccupation on boarding an aircraft is to get a gin and tonic inside me as quickly, as possible.
We can get things badly wrong with activities where the risk is high, the benefits are low and the dread is low. Cigarette smoking is a good example. The risk to health from cigarettes is undoubtedly high.
Any positive benefits one could ascribe to cigarette smoking are small and could readily be supplied by other, benign activities. However, the dread factor is low. Smoking cigarettes is socially acceptable, although less so than in the past.
A colleague who is anti smoking tells a story of travelling on a bus in Cork. Several passengers were contentedly smoking. He called the conductor band pointedly asked: "Is smoking allowed on the lower deck?" The conductor thought for a minute and replied, "Well, no it's not. But fire away, sure we won't mind you".
Another example of a high risk, low benefit, low dread activity is sunbathing. It has been known for a considerable time that "sun worship" is a risky business. The benefits are very much more apparent than real.
Many people believe a deep tan makes them look more attractive. (Nevertheless, I wonder how many of these people would opt to keep this deep tan colour as their permanent natural colour if given a choice.)
It has been difficult to persuade people to protect themselves adequately from the sun. However, a recent development, which has a high dread factor associated with it, is helping enormously to raise people's consciousness in this area. This development is the thinning of the ozone layer, which allows more ultraviolet light to reach the surface of the Earth.
Ultraviolet light is the dangerous agent in sunlight which can cause skin cancer. People dread the thinning of the protective ozone layer high in the atmosphere.
In fact, the thinning at our latitudes is small and only a small extra fraction of ultraviolet light reaches the Earth. The increased risk associated with this is also small, but it is feared out of proportion to its extent and causes people to be much more wary of exposing themselves to sunlight than in the past.
Why are we so blase about many activities that are objectively very dangerous e.g. cigarette smoking? There are probably many factors affecting our, attitudes here, including familiarity. One factor common to many such instances is the feeling that the situation is under our own control.
For example, a cigarette smoker knows there are no external forces compelling him or her to smoke. Also, the smoker knows he or she can voluntarily choose to stop smoking at any time.
This feeling of being in control seems to induce a sense of complacency. On the other hand, a common thread associated with activities that have a low risk, but a high dread factor, is a feeling of having no control over the situation. This is how people feel about aircraft. If the engine stops, you are left sitting way up there in the air, in a box that is about to hurtle to Earth, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it.
OUR main problem with risk assessment, as I see it, is associated with the high risk/low dread situation. We could all obviously benefit by reassessing our attitudes to cigarette smoking, wearing seat belts, sun worshipping, etc.
I would be less concerned about the low risk/high dread category. It may well be to our long term advantage to retain substantial fears of matters over which we have no control, for of events which are potentially catastrophic on a wide scale.
However, some sensible discipline must be exercised to prevent things getting out of hand. For example, people are hugely fearful of the tiniest bit of radiation that originates from the nuclear industry. At the same time they don't seem to be very concerned about instances of high levels of the natural radioactive gas radon.
Also, the high dread factor frequently leads to strident calls that new industries be required to perform to standards that guarantee zero risk. A zero risk criterion is an impossible criterion.
Finally, did you hear about the statistician who had to fly a lot in the course of his work and was worried about the possibility of a terrorist bomb on the aircraft? He solved his problem by always packing a bomb in his suitcase. He calculated that the odds against two bombs on the one aircraft were so incredibly high as to make such an occurrence impossible.