Interesting article on risk homeostasis

[jdfreefly 1]

First page talks about skydiving, other than calling us "adrenalin junkies", it seemed pretty good.

I haven't gotten through the whole thing yet (since I'm actually working at work today), so I'm not sure if it belongs here or in the bonfire....

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=d5262c0c-ebd3-479a-a700-954dfa7d063d

Methane Freefly - got stink?

[RB_Hammer 0]

Clicky

"I'm not lost. I don't know where I'm going, but there's no sense in being late."
Mathew Quigley

[jdatc 0]

I am so glad people are finaly starting to take interest in the theory.

A great book is:

Target Risk 2:
A New Psychology of Safety and Health

It's by Gerald Wilde, who postulates the whole risk homeostasis theory. cool and interesting to me and I hatemost psychology texts....

A lot of the data is auto related stuff, but still pretty interesting if you like risk theory and such.....

Coincidentaly, it arrived right before a base jumping trip I took to Idaho. go figure.

_justin

[likearock 2]

Another good book on a related topic:

Transcending Fear: Relax, Focus and Flow
by Brian Germain

[pchapman 279]

The article on risk has some interesting info. But in the part that dealt with skydiving, I think it was wrong.

It suggested (based on who they interviewed) that there is a link between (a) reduced fatalities from AADs and (b) increased "hook turn" fatalities, and that that postulated link is explained by risk homeostasis.

It is funny that it the fatality stats work out that way, but if we had small zero-P canopies but no Cypres', we'd still be hooking them in. And some people would still be late on their reserve pulls, despite others hooking it in.

(I'm leaving aside minor links like small snivelly canopies being partially the cause of people pulling higher in general, that may allow more time to fix problems, even if the canopy is snivelly.)

[Mikhail 0]

Interestingly enough, I started flipping through some material on risk perception, etc., just last week. Some very interesting stuff. "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" by Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky is keeping me occupied.

[happythoughts 0]

Booth's Law #2

Quote

The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant.
- Bill Booth

[dgw 8]

I grew up in Ireland, and, like everywhere else, kids had an evolving slang vocabulary to express the degree of 'coolness' of everything.

'Cool' is fairly timeless. Lots of things are cool. Lots of things are 'uncool'.

When I was about eleven, a couple of new monikers came into common use. One was 'Big Swing' in place of 'Big Deal', and, if the situation warranted, it could have additional weight through the appendage.. 'of the mickey' (Universal Latin translation: of the penis). The other was 'deadly'. A day off school was deadly. The A-Team was deadly. Magnum was deadly. Magnum's Ferarri was deadly. The birds (another moniker) in Magnum were deadly.

When assessing my personal risk homoestasis regarding skydiving, I am drawn to the view that it is 'deadly'.