Risk

I do a lot of sports which, when I talk about them with a layperson, provoke horror or eyerolling at the levels of risk they involve, but I don’t feel like I am a reckless person - their perception of the activity is coloured by a lot of misconceptions about the nature of risk.

A lot of people conflate risk and consequence - when most people talk about risk, what they often mean is that the consequences of something going wrong are dire. For example skydiving is a pretty low risk activity, but when things go wrong, they are usually fatal. Compare this to bouldering - the chances of falling are high, but you are close enough to the ground that you generally walk away without injury. Hiking is a high risk activity, but the consequences are usually just blisters.

If we want a single quantifier for risk, we should limit ourself to serious injury or death - ie, the risk of becoming a casualty. If we define this as the sum of all the risk multiplied by the consequences, we have a useful measurement of the danger of any activity. Somewhat confusingly, this term is known as “risk” in the literature, but bear with my redefinitions for now.

One useful metric is ‘micromorts’ - the chance in a million that an activity will lead to death - there are many charts of micromorts per hour for a variety of activities. But here too we conflate the risk and the consequence.

Commercial flying is a very high consequence activity with very low risk - somehow this is popularly known and understood.

Both risk and consequence can be partially mitigated - when I used to white water kayak, we had the concept of “high consequence rapids”. A lot of the time we mitigated these by walking around them.

Helmets and back protectors are two types of equipment that aim to reduce consequences. They do nothing for the risk.

I ski tour without an avalanche airbag and have sometimes paraglided without a helmet or reserve - some people might criticise that decision as being recklessly risky, but in both cases I have increased my consequence, not the risk. And actually I offset that by reducing the risk of the activity.

One third of people caught in an avalanche die from impact with rocks or being crushed by the snow. No avalanche airbag can stop that - clearly the best course of action is to not be caught in an avalanche to begin with.

Similarly, when I fly without a reserve I am usually flying too low to be able to deploy one in an emergency - it has no effect on my consequences, but I am even more conscious to reduce my risk by flying in only perfect conditions.

Theres actually a lot of research showing that wearing protective equipment increases proclivity for risk, as the mental safety net lowers inhibitions, but all of this equipment is for consequence, not risk. (This is known as the Peltzman Effect)

Prevention is better than cure - its better to never need the helmet.

But risk mitigation is a lot harder - most of it is contextual and requires deep understanding of an individuals capabilities, the conditions, the external factors.

Road biking is a surprisingly risky activity, but most of the risk comes from cars, which are an extrinsic factor - you can’t mitigate what you don’t control. But looking deeper, part of the risk comes from a car being able to see you, so wearing brightly colored clothes is a risk mitigating action.

Paragliding is a very environmentally affected activity, you can’t change the weather, but you can choose whether to fly - having a deep understanding of the meteorology is part of the necessary risk calculation.

Avalanches are another environmental risk - and if you watch any experienced and responsible backcountry snow athlete, they are constantly monitoring the snowpack, and ready to retreat down a previously planned escape route if the risk is too high. Retreat is a good way to avoid risk.

All of these factors are obscured in the micromort measurement - there are numbers for motorcycling (high), motorcycling with a helmet (still high, but less so), and motorcyling while impaired by alcohol (ridiculously high), but the numbers don’t show the mentality of the rider, or their attitude on the day.

A lot of activities have intrinsic, non avoidable risk, and thats just life. The risk reward calculation is an entirely different topic.