![The three conditions (Problems) used in the current study, Choice parameters for each
condition, and the predicted (using computer simulations) and observed (experimental) Risk-choice rates [average payoffs appear in brackets].](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Doron-Cohen-4/publication/326044748/figure/fig5/AS:1180266051706880@1658408763649/The-three-conditions-Problems-used-in-the-current-study-Choice-parameters-for_Q320.jpg)
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On safety, protection, and underweighting of rare events
Abstract and Figures
The current research clarifies the conditions under which safety enhancing interventions backfire. A laboratory experiment compares three repeated choice conditions. In condition Baseline, the participants were asked to choose between a safe prospect, and a counterproductive risky prospect that led to a gain, moderate loss, or a large but rare loss. The other conditions simulate safety interventions that modify Condition Baseline by protecting the participants from one of the two losses, while keeping the risky choice equally counterproductive. Results show that protection against the rare loss was effective, but the protection against the moderate loss impaired participants' earnings. The results are captured with a simple model that assumes reliance on small samples of past experiences. Implications are discussed.
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... Leading explanations for this effect assume that the safer Davy lamp led people to behave as if they "forgot to be afraid" (Baker et al., 2007;Reason, 1998). That is, people tend to behave as if they perceive the product they are consuming to be less risky, i.e., capable of producing negative outcomes, than its objective risk level (Cohen & Erev, 2018). ...
... While the cognitive processes triggering a "forgetting to be afraid" effect can be rather complex, their impact can be clarified with a simple prediction-oriented cognitive model (Cohen & Erev, 2018). ...
Classic behaviorist and cognitivist approaches to consumer research are based on very different assumptions concerning the nature of the cognitive processes that drive consumption. Classic behaviorist research assumes that the underlying cognitive processes are extremely complex, and the effort to model them is not likely to lead to useful insights. In contrast, classic cognitivist research assumes that the underlying cognitive processes can be precisely captured with simple cognitive models. The current paper highlights the value of a middle ground. This middle ground favors the assumption that while the underlying processes are highly complex, their impact can be approximated with prediction-oriented cognitive models. The potential of this approach is illustrated with a review of previous research demonstrating how a simple prediction-oriented model can shed light on four interesting consumption puzzles: Buying and not using, the backfiring of certain safety devices, too much and insufficient checking, and underconsumption and overconsumption.
... Disaster emergency rescue is an essential system engineering, and its risk management provides effective decision supports for the stable operations of this system engineering [1][2][3]. The unique superiorities of aviation emergency rescue, such as air search capability, rapid response capability, and less restriction by geographic space, become the most effective way for many developed countries to deal with various disasters [4][5][6][7]. In addition, in some areas with harsh terrain such as coastlines or mountains, air-craft are often the only rescue equipment that can reach the disaster area. ...
... We use improved SCM to analyze the causes of aviation emergency rescue failures from the perspectives of personnel, machines, environment, and management. Meanwhile, by analyzing and comparing the connotation, characteristic, and influencing factor of aviation emergency rescue [4][5][6][7]59], a failure model of aviation emergency rescue based on improved SCM is established as shown in Figure 2. ...
An effective risk assessment approach for assessing the risk level of aviation emergency rescue is essential to aviation emergency management. Therefore, this study is aimed at extending a novel integrated multiattribute group decision-making (MAGDM) approach to conduct risk assessment in aviation emergency rescue. First, a combined improved Swiss cheese model and fault tree analysis method are used to build the index system for risk assessment. Next, the weight vector for risk assessment is calculated using the consensus-based improved analytic hierarchy process (IAHP). Then, based on the traditional technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) method, we improve the definition express of ideal solution and the standardized formula of indexes, thereby providing a consensus-based improved TOPSIS method to compute the evaluation matrix for risk assessment. Finally, the weight vector and evaluation matrix are combined to estimate the risk level of aviation emergency rescue. As aviation emergency rescue in a sudden natural disaster an example, we illustrate the feasibility of the proposed method and demonstrate its effectiveness by comparative analysis with some similar approaches. The proposed approach can evaluate the safety status of aviation emergency rescue operations, which provides a starting point for the improvement of aviation emergency rescue.
... While this set of situations has clear boundaries, it contains many important members. Examples include settings in which safety devices increase accidents (Cohen & Erev, 2018), taxation backfires (YCNE), people over and under-commit to a course of action (Cohen & Erev, 2021), experience reduces the tendency to trust well-calibrated experts (Erev et al., 2022) and it is necessary to enforce rules (Plonsky et al., 2021). Yet, more insight into how people respond to different dimensions of similarity, and how these similarities interact, is necessary to predict behavior when dynamic regularities are easily detectable. ...
Experience is the best teacher. Yet, in the context of repeated decisions, experience was found to trigger deviations from maximization in the direction of underweighting of rare events. Evaluations of alternative explanations for this bias led to contradicting conclusions. Studies that focused on the aggregate choice rates, including a series of choice prediction competitions, favored the assumption that this bias reflects reliance on small samples. In contrast, studies that focused on individual decisions suggest that the bias reflects a strong myopic tendency by a significant minority of participants. The current analysis clarifies the apparent inconsistency by reanalyzing a data set that previously led to contradicting conclusions. Our analysis suggests that the apparent inconsistency reflects the differing focus of the cognitive models. Specifically, sequential adjustment models (that assume sensitivity to the payoffs' weighted averages) tend to find support for the hypothesis that the deviations from maximization are a product of strong positive recency (a form of myopia). Conversely, models assuming random sampling of past experiences tend to find support to the hypothesis that the deviations reflect reliance on small samples. We propose that the debate should be resolved by using the assumptions that provide better predictions. Applying this solution to the data set we analyzed shows that the random sampling assumption outperforms the weighted average assumption both when predicting the aggregate choice rates and when predicting the individual decisions.
... Overall, findings of the current study suggest that risk compensation behaviours may exist, where pedestrians who used a mobile phone while crossing tend to obey traffic signals and cross within the crosswalk to reduce the risk. This can be explained by risk compensation theory, which posits that people adjust their behaviours according to the perceived risk level (Noland, 1995;Cohen and Erev, 2018). ...
Pedestrian distraction related to mobile phone use has become an emerging road safety issue. While much research has investigated the effects of pedestrian distraction on risky crossing behaviours, little is understood about potential risk compensation behaviours and the relationships between pedestrian distraction and safety outcomes, such as near-misses or involvement in a conflict situation. This paper aims to explore pedestrian distraction and its associations with other risky crossing behaviours and safety outcomes, using field observation data in Hanoi, Vietnam. Associations between pedestrian distraction and risky behaviours or conflict situations were identified using log-binomial and logistic regression. Results show that around 14.4% of pedestrians were distracted while crossing. Interestingly, while distracted pedestrians were more likely not to observe traffic while crossing, they were less likely to violate traffic signals or cross outside the marked crosswalks. These findings suggest distracted pedestrians may have risk compensation behaviours. Results also indicated a relatively small yet significant effect of mobile phone distraction on conflict situations.
... For the safety inspection of new energy plant stations in Gansu province in 2016 and 2017 [6-9], 21 and 16 internet violations were detected, which brought huge security threats to the plant stations. At the same time, it also ringed alarm bells of safety protection for new energy plant station [10][11]. Therefore, we designed an efficient network boundary security monitoring technology to protect the stations. ...
New websites and smartphone applications provide easy-click checking opportunities that can help consumers in many domains. However, this technology is not always used effectively. For example, many consumers skip checking “Terms and Conditions” links even when a quick evaluation of the terms can save money, but check their smartphone while driving even thought this behavior is illegal and dangerous. Four laboratory experiments clarify the significance of one contributor to such contradictory deviations from effective checking. Studies 1, 2, and 3 show that, like basic decisions from experience, checking decisions reflect underweighting of rare events, which in turn is a sufficient condition for the coexistence of insufficient and too much checking. Insufficient checking emerges when most checking efforts impair performance even if checking is effective on average. Too much checking emerges when most checking clicks are rewarding even if checking is counterproductive on average. This pattern can be captured with a model that assumes reliance on small samples of past checking decision experiences. Study 4 shows that when the goal is to increase checking, interventions which increase the probability that checking leads to the best possible outcome can be far more effective than efforts to reduce the cost of checking.
Background
The research literature was systematically reviewed and results were summarized from studies assessing bicycle helmet effectiveness to mitigate head, serious head, face, neck and fatal head injury in a crash or fall.
Methods
Four electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, COMPENDEX and SCOPUS) were searched for relevant, peer-reviewed articles in English. Included studies reported medically diagnosed head, face and neck injuries where helmet use was known. Non-approved helmets were excluded where possible. Summary odds ratios (OR) were obtained using multivariate meta-regression models stratified by injury type and severity. Time trends and publication bias were assessed.
Results
A total of 43 studies met inclusion criteria and 40 studies were included in the meta-analysis with data from over 64 000 injured cyclists. For cyclists involved in a crash or fall, helmet use was associated with odds reductions for head [OR = 0.49, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.42–0.57), serious head (OR = 0.31, 95% CI: 0.25–0.37), face (OR = 0.67, 95% CI: 0.56–0.81) and fatal head injury (OR = 0.35, 95% CI: 0.14–0.88). No clear evidence of an association between helmet use and neck injury was found (OR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.74–1.25). There was no evidence of time trends or publication bias.
Conclusions
Bicycle helmet use was associated with reduced odds of head injury, serious head injury, facial injury and fatal head injury. The reduction was greater for serious or fatal head injury. Neck injury was rare and not associated with helmet use. These results support the use of strategies to increase the uptake of bicycle helmets as part of a comprehensive cycling safety plan.
Understanding factors affecting road accidents is an important area in road safety research. This paper provides a review of the factors, with specific focus on traffic and road related factors mainly for car accidents on major roads. This paper also offers an overview of road safety theories that explain how and why these factors affect road traffic accidents. This paper offers the road safety community with a better understanding of road accidents and aids in developing suitable methods and policies for road safety improvement. Several factors most notably: speed, congestion, and road horizontal curvature were found to have mixed effects on road safety and need further examination.
Text messaging while driving is considered dangerous and known to produce injuries and fatalities. However, the effects of text messaging on driving performance have not been synthesized or summarily estimated. All available experimental studies that measured the effects of text messaging on driving were identified through database searches using variants of “driving” and “texting” without restriction on year of publication through March 2014. Of the 1476 abstracts reviewed, 82 met general inclusion criteria. Of these, 28 studies were found to sufficiently compare reading or typing text messages while driving with a control or baseline condition. Independent variables (text-messaging tasks) were coded as typing, reading, or a combination of both. Dependent variables included eye movements, stimulus detection, reaction time, collisions, lane positioning, speed and headway. Statistics were extracted from studies to compute effect sizes (rc). A total sample of 977 participants from 28 experimental studies yielded 234 effect size estimates of the relationships among independent and dependent variables. Typing and reading text messages while driving adversely affected eye movements, stimulus detection, reaction time, collisions, lane positioning, speed and headway. Typing text messages alone produced similar decrements as typing and reading, whereas reading alone had smaller decrements over fewer dependent variables. Typing and reading text messages affects drivers’ capability to adequately direct attention to the roadway, respond to important traffic events, control a vehicle within a lane and maintain speed and headway. This meta-analysis provides convergent evidence that texting compromises the safety of the driver, passengers and other road users. Combined efforts, including legislation, enforcement, blocking technologies, parent modeling, social media, social norms and education, will be required to prevent continued deaths and injuries from texting and driving.
Distracted driving attributable to the performance of secondary tasks is a major cause of motor vehicle crashes both among teenagers who are novice drivers and among adults who are experienced drivers.
We conducted two studies on the relationship between the performance of secondary tasks, including cell-phone use, and the risk of crashes and near-crashes. To facilitate objective assessment, accelerometers, cameras, global positioning systems, and other sensors were installed in the vehicles of 42 newly licensed drivers (16.3 to 17.0 years of age) and 109 adults with more driving experience.
During the study periods, 167 crashes and near-crashes among novice drivers and 518 crashes and near-crashes among experienced drivers were identified. The risk of a crash or near-crash among novice drivers increased significantly if they were dialing a cell phone (odds ratio, 8.32; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.83 to 24.42), reaching for a cell phone (odds ratio, 7.05; 95% CI, 2.64 to 18.83), sending or receiving text messages (odds ratio, 3.87; 95% CI, 1.62 to 9.25), reaching for an object other than a cell phone (odds ratio, 8.00; 95% CI, 3.67 to 17.50), looking at a roadside object (odds ratio, 3.90; 95% CI, 1.72 to 8.81), or eating (odds ratio, 2.99; 95% CI, 1.30 to 6.91). Among experienced drivers, dialing a cell phone was associated with a significantly increased risk of a crash or near-crash (odds ratio, 2.49; 95% CI, 1.38 to 4.54); the risk associated with texting or accessing the Internet was not assessed in this population. The prevalence of high-risk attention to secondary tasks increased over time among novice drivers but not among experienced drivers.
The risk of a crash or near-crash among novice drivers increased with the performance of many secondary tasks, including texting and dialing cell phones. (Funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.).
In-vehicle data recorders (IVDR) have been found to facilitate safe driving and are highly valuable in accident analysis. Nevertheless, it is not easy to convince drivers to use them. Part of the difficulty is related to the “Big Brother” concern: installing IVDR impairs the drivers' privacy. The “Big Brother” concern can be mitigated by adding a turn-off switch to the IVDR. However, this addition comes at the expense of increasing speed variability between drivers, which is known to impair safety. The current experimental study examines the significance of this negative effect of a turn-off switch under two experimental settings representing different incentive structures: small and large fines for speeding. 199 students were asked to participate in a computerized speeding dilemma task, where they could control the speed of their “car” using “brake” and “speed” buttons, corresponding to automatic car foot pedals. The participants in two experimental conditions had IVDR installed in their “cars”, and were told that they could turn it off at any time. Driving with active IVDR implied some probability of “fines” for speeding, and the two experimental groups differed with respect to the fine’s magnitude, small or large. The results indicate that the option to use IVDR reduced speeding and speed variance. In addition, the results indicate that the reduction of speed variability was maximal in the small fine group. These results suggest that using IVDR with gentle fines and with a turn-off option maintains the positive effect of IVDR, addresses the “Big Brother” concern, and does not increase speed variance.
This paper examines the bureaucratization of safety, and the increase in safety as measurable bureaucratic accountability. The bureaucratization of safety—which has accelerated since the 1970s—revolves around hierarchy, specialization and division of labor, and formalized rules. Bureaucratic accountability refers to the activities expected of organization members to account for the safety performance of those they are responsible for (e.g. unit, team, site). Bureaucratization of safety has brought benefits, including a reduction of harm, standardization, transparency and control. It has been driven by regulation, liability and insurance arrangements, outsourcing and contracting, and technologies for surveillance and data storage. However, bureaucratization generates secondary effects that run counter to its original goals. These include a reduced marginal yield of safety initiatives, bureaucratic entrepreneurism and pettiness, an inability to predict unexpected events, structural secrecy, “numbers games,” the creation of new safety problems, and constraints on organization members’ personal freedom, diversity and creativity, as well as a hampering of innovation. This paper concludes with possible ideas for addressing such problems.
The rationality assumption that underlies mainstream economic theory has proved to be a useful approximation, despite the fact that systematic violations to its predictions can be found. That is, the assumption of rational behavior is useful in understanding the ways in which many successful economic institutions function, although it is also true that actual human behavior falls systematically short of perfect rationality. We consider a possible explanation of this apparent inconsistency, suggesting that mechanisms that rest on the rationality assumption are likely to be successful when they create an environment in which the behavior they try to facilitate leads to the best payoff for all agents on average, and most of the time. Review of basic learning research suggests that, under these conditions, people quickly learn to maximize expected return. This review also shows that there are many situations in which experience does not increase maximization. In many cases, experience leads people to underweight rare events. In addition, the current paper suggests that it is convenient to distinguish between two behavioral approaches to improve economic analyses. The first, and more conventional approach among behavioral economists and psychologists interested in judgment and decision making, highlights violations of the rational model and proposes descriptive models that capture these violations. The second approach studies human learning to clarify the conditions under which people quickly learn to maximize expected return. The current review highlights one set of conditions of this type and shows how the understanding of these conditions can facilitate market design.
This paper reviews theoretical issues surrounding transport safety modeling and the implications for road safety policy. The behavioral mechanisms that affect transport safety are typically not considered in safety modeling. These issues are discussed in the context of trade-offs between risk-taking, as perceived by travelers, and other mobility objectives and the attributes associated with them. This is an extension of other theoretical frameworks, such as risk compensation, and attempts to integrate some of the previous frameworks developed over the years. Various examples of behavioral adaptation to specific policies are discussed and linked to the framework. These issues are then discussed in the context of improvements to empirical work in this area and the linkage of theoretical frameworks to crash modeling, in particular the estimation and use of Crash Modification Factors. Conclusions suggest that there are many deficiencies in practice, from estimation of models to choice of effective policies. Progress is being made on the former, while the publication of practical guidance seems to have substantial lags in knowledge.