BMJ 2002;324:1149-1152 ( 11 May )

Education and debate

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    Does risk homoeostasis theory have implications for road safety
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    Against

Does risk homoeostasis theory have implications for road safety

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Risk homoeostasis (also called risk compensation) theory predicts that, as safety features are added to vehicles and roads, drivers tend to increase their exposure to collision risk because they feel better protected. Gerald Wilde provides evidence for it and suggests that it should be used to inform road safety strategies. Leon Robertson and Barry Pless, however, argue that the evidence is deeply flawed and that the theory is little better than an excuse for doing nothing

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Gerald J S Wilde, professor emeritus of psychology. 

Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

wildeg@psyc.queensu.ca

Anyone wishing to reduce the risk of misfortune on the road to zero can do so by never using the roads, but that person would also miss all the benefits accruing from road travel and thus live a greatly diminished life. Suboptimal risk taking also occurs if a person underestimates or overestimates the danger of a given activity, because that person would either take too much risk or too little for greatest net benefit. . . . [Full text of this article]

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