Two safety policies that may well be pursued by the same accident prevention agency are the following. The first aims to reduce the severity of the consequences risky behaviour and takes the form of seat belt installation and wearing, air bags, crashworthy vehicle design, forgiving roads (collapsible lamp posts and barriers), low tar/nicotine cigarettes, low alcohol beer, safety shoes and the like. The second policy is to increase the severity the consequences of imprudent behaviour, and includes things such as speed bumps, narrow street passages, barbed wire and fines for violations. Apart from noting that these two policies seem logically contradictory, we will see that neither is likely to reduce the accident rate per head of population, because people adapt their behaviour to changes in environmental conditions. Theory and data is presented to indicate that the loss in per capita safety and lifestyle-dependent health is unlikely to diminish, unless the amount of risk people are willing to take is reduced. (Author/publisher) Also published as Injury Prevention 1998;4:89–91
Samenvatting