Risk Homeostasis?

A recent high-profile article announced and summarized the findings of a fairly robust study of ski helmet use with the headline “Wearing a Ski Helmet Can Increase Risk of Serious Injury”. Catchy headline, eh?... I thought so. But, the "catch" is more than just journalistic. Read it and learn that the correlation between helmet use and injury is more behavioral than it is an equipment issue. For instance, one of the study's findings is that helmeted people crashed into "stationary objects much more so than non-helmeted patients". It follows that crashing into a stationary object increases your risk of serious injury, whether or not you are wearing a helmet. One can conclude that skiers wearing helmets go faster, closer to stationary objects, with less control than those that do not wear helmets. We can all identify with this. “This helmet keeps me safer. I can go harder”. The linked article and study draws no hard and fast conclusions about overall risks of wearing or not wearing a ski helmet.

The above described behavioral concept is often called “risk homeostasis”. You mitigate risk in one area and, in direct response, take additional risks in another area. If the risks are indeed perfectly balanced, your risk management strategy has resulted in absolutely no change in your overall risk exposure or vulnerability. No change in risk = “Risk Homeostasis”.

Add the rope to reduce the likelihood of a fall and we can play in conditions that increase the likelihood of a fall. For instance, no rope here and no amount of sluffing snow is reasonable.

This concept is then interpreted variously. Most commonly, and vociferously, risk homeostasis is promulgated as a reason to resist additional risk management measures. Especially among those with luddite leanings, noting that a new technique or technology, minus the vagaries of human behavior, doesn’t actually make one safer is suggested as a reason to not adopt the new technique or technology. This seems a little silly.

With any of our oh-so-human self-sabotaging behaviors, “to name it is to tame it”. Understanding and accepting our own tendencies is the first and most powerful step in mitigating the ill-effects of those tendencies. I propose that we can wear a helmet and not actually increase our likelihood of running into a tree.

Minutes later, same place. Small avalanche. In this case, annoying face full of snow and hilarious photo. No worse. Thanks to the rope. Without the rope in the same situation? Much, much worse. Adding the rope allowed us to descend this section with a little avalanche hazard with no ill effects: risk homeostasis.

Further, is maintaining a consistent level of risk exposure and/or vulnerability a bad thing? If I adopt a new technique or technology that reduces my risk of one eventuality it allows me to take on greater risk (and therefore reap greater rewards… There is no question that there is a direct relationship between risk and rewards. Especially in the mountains) without changing my risk exposure or tolerance. I dig that.

Now, of course, risk calculations are subjective at best. Written right into the phrase “risk homeostasis” is the suggestion of the possibility of mathematically calculating something that is inherently uncertain and resistant to hard calculation. Nonetheless, we will calculate and we will push.

We aren’t perfect beasts, but I am sure that “tricking” ourselves into safety is a short path to sure destruction. “I won’t wear a helmet in order to ski more slowly” is one possible conclusion of the linked study. But it is surely the most short-sighted and least sophisticated interpretation.