Miata Mailing List: May 1998, Message #2836

sponsored by

this post forwarded to me by my brother, a lister @ paddlewise - I 
thought some of you may find this interesting, stickers or no...

\/\/

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> from Dr. Wilde's book:  "one's increased belief in personal skills
> increases risk taking out of proportion to real risk."
> 
> This is exactly what I was talking about.  

This quote seems somewhat out of context, at least as a statement of a
general proposition.  For example, Wilde points out that the most
skilled drivers of all--racing drivers--have higher accident rates (on
public roads) than less skilled drivers. He rejects, however, the
explanation that this is due to overconfidence, prefering instead to
attribute the result to differences in risk targets: 

 "In our view, the increased accident frequency of the racing 
 drivers is not due to their superior driving skill--since accident
 frequency in RHT [Risk Homeostasis Theory] is regarded as ultimately
 independent of skill--but can more likely be attributed to a 	
greater-than-average acceptance of risk, which induced them to pick 
 up the activity of car racing to begin with. At their level of skill,
 driving like the average driver may be intolerably boring."

This is precisely what I suspect to be true of skilled paddlers.  To
the extent that they have higher accident rates, it may reflect
different attitudes toward the optimal level of risk (as opposed to
overconfidence). Elsewhere in the book Wilde provides yet another
possible explanation. He suggests that those with fewer skills may
tend to OVERestimate risk, which implies that they have lower accident
rates than they would if their risk estimates were unbiased.  As they
become more skilled and better informed about an activity, their
accident rates will tend to rise.  Such individuals increase their
exposure disproportionately with their improvement in skills.  The
resulting increase in accident rates is **desirable**, however, in the
sense that such individuals are converging on their target levels of
risk.

Finally, if you are to be consistent in your application of Wilde's
analysis, you should acknowledge that all of your talk of grave
dangers awaiting ill-informed paddlers may contribute to the problem. 
Warnings can be counterproductive if they exaggerate the risk.  As
Wilde explains:        

 "This is why over-use of warnings may be dangerous. A warning that is
not perceived as needed will not be heeded--even when it is needed.
..
 Similarly, 'a warning can increase danger when it overstates danger',
 meaning that a person's behaviour may become less cautious if that
  person has learned that the danger is usually less great than stated
in the warning."

The bottom line is that warnings are useful and productive only to the
extent that the danger is not overstated. This is something that we
should all keep in mind.

Dan Hagen
Bellingham, Washington
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