WHY RISK-TAKING NEEDS TO BE SENSIBLE

Many people grumble that we’re living in a snowflake world where excitement is being removed from our lives by a Health and Safety obsession. It’s as though safety is an effete thing and as for health – well, bring me my Capstan Full Strength and a Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. Smokers cough? Nah! That’s a manly growl.

In fact we live in a more civilised world now where, in general, we are more attentive to other people’s feelings and vulnerability. We are not snowflakes; we are more sensible . Apart from cyclists some of whom operate by weaving between traffic, riding on pavements and ignoring red lights. But we need to protect them from their own audacity.

With 18,000 cyclists injured on our roads last year I calculate, as a driver, that if they hit me I might get a dent but if I hit them they bleed. So I always, sensibly, give way to them and constantly look in my wing mirrors.

Recently the Oxford Union forbad clapping and loud applause to avoid risking upsetting people who are stressed by loud noises. Instead they allow jazz-hands which is waving your hands around like a Gospel singer. Stupid? Well, so the world seemed to think, as did I, until I thought about it a bit more .  The world is getting noisier and organisations like Quiet Mark who’ve done a lot to make it smarter to be quieter know you don’t have to whoop, whistle and shout to say “I love it”. But it should have been quiet-hands not jazz-hands and then we’d have approved.

The risk business was close to home when our local community firework event traditionally a truly splendid and lavish affair was to have taken place on Saturday November  2nd. The Met Office ‘Yellow Warning’ of strong winds was downplayed by some who sought better forecasts from other sources, hoped the storm would pass over and that, hell, maybe we should just go for it anyway.

The fact that our insurance would be void if we’d carried on regardless met with a discontented grumble about how in the good-old-days people were more hardy and adventurous. After all they didn’t have insurance in the Second World War, did they? I fantasied about a conversation that wasn’t actually had:

“Do you remember that year we had a hurricane? We carried on then.”
“Was that the year Harry got hit by a rocket...”
“Yeah. And lost an eye.“
“Yeah that was the year. Right eye wasn’t it?”   

Health and safety experts are really awful at communicating their messages. Most of what they do is based on calculating how likely an accident would be to happen and how serious it would be if it did occur. In other words they do good, sound risk assessments.

That sounds like common sense. But when it’s announced in a petulant and  didactic tone of voice we turn off, get rebellious and a bit stroppy. Make it sound sensible and we listen.