Lisa Belkin, in The New York Times Week in Review this past weekend, writes:

... the five things most likely to cause injury to children up to age 18, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are: car accidents, homicide (usually at the hands of someone they know), child abuse, suicide or drowning. And what are the five things that parents are most worried about (according to surveys by the Mayo Clinic)? Kidnapping, school snipers, terrorists, dangerous strangers and drugs.

“Parents are just bad at risk assessment,” said Christie Barnes, a mother of four and the author of “The Paranoid Parents Guide.” “We are constantly overestimating rare dangers while underestimating common ones.”

Weird. Should children be rescued from such a dysfunctional environment as the average American family?

Humans are bad at risk assesment. Same principle applies elsewhere.

Child abuse ranks higher than suicide in the threats to lives/safety of children? Really?

That asides and, on top of what Contra pointed out, I think there are various factors, not all illogical, which help determine how we view and react to "risks".

For example, when you're saying driving is very risky, how do you measure risk? Per amount of death? Or re-sized for the amount of journeys being made?

Furthermore, there is the question of control over your (your children's) fate. People may be more likely to panic/worry about things over which they have no control whatsoever than over things where they think (rightly or wrongly) that they have some control over. To take the case of people being accidented/killed while phoning in cars, they are deliberately adopting a dangerous behaviour. That's choice.

Being sniped doesn't leave you much of agency...

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Quote:

To take the case of people being accidented/killed while phoning in cars, they are deliberately adopting a dangerous behaviour.

I doubt it. I think it more likely that they think they are superior drivers, so that they can talk on the phone without incurring any risk. Evidence is, I seem to recall, that most people caught drink driving (the blood alcohol limit is 0.05 grams per litre here) do not believe that they pose any more risk than an "average" sober driver.

Well, yes, indeed.

That's why I said "over things where they think (rightly or wrongly) that they have some control over..."

I mean, I agree that people are deluded idiots in general but one interesting aspect of the new research on rationality is that, usually, the short cuts taken by people and their deviances from perfectly rational behaviour are not "irrational"... Hence, that new-ish expression of "limited" rationality.

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Herbert Simon was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 for his work in elucidating the role of bounded rationality in human affairs.

That is only 32 years ago so it is not surprising that not everyone has caught up with the notion.

Is that you or me who haven't caught up with these advances?

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