Megan McArdle points to an interesting article about a Dutch traffic engineer, famous for removing traffic signs and thereby increasing safety. Both Megan's post and the article are very much worth reading. (Bonus new material provided by me: Here's the Google satellite view of the intersection described in detail in the article.)
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I had never thought of it before, but the original article points out, and Megan highlights, a key piece of information: In some cases, making people feel less safe will make them safer in reality. Traffic engineering, apparently, is one of these cases. Encouraging people to be alert and attentive encourages safe driving. And apparently, we make people feel less safe -- and encourage them to pay attention -- not when we plaster warnings, signs, and markings everywhere, but rather when we take them away. (There's an argument, of course, that this effect lasts only as long as it takes for people to get comfortable in the new environment. Not sure about the data for that one.)
Other times, to feel safer is to be safer -- that is, feelings of safety can contribute to actual safety. One can imagine many situations in which calmness -- a product of feeling safe -- helps you avoid mistakes. Another situation that comes to mind is childbirth; being relaxed and in a place where one feels secure helps the flow of hormones that loosen and open up the body.
The main lesson to take away? Feeling safe and being safe are separate issues -- not necessarily correlated or anti-correlated (is that a word? Oh well, you know what I meant.) And if a population is going to make rational decisions about safety regulations, it has to be able to step outside itself a bit, look at how it "feels" about regulations objectively, and consider what reality is created by those perceptions.
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