"We ignore the risks of the things we want to do and invoke the risks of the things we don't want to do."

I believe some (many) "risk takers" would argue that they _control_ the risks of things they want to do.

Alex Honnold who stars in the movie Free Solo has made the argument that he is not taking undo risks; he notes he meticulously practices his climb, with rope protection, until he knows exactly how he is going to do a free solo climb.  He, of course, admits if he screws up things can go bad quickly, but he feels he "controls" the risk.   Interestingly, if you listen to the link podcast, Alex talks about his biggest fears are not falling while climbing, but speaking to a public audience during a Ted Talk.

If you hang around the lab long enough, you'll get similar discussion - "I've been doing this long enough I understand all the risks , and control them (usually with administrative controls of SOPs, practice, etc.)." Of course the questions are 1) do you really understand all the risks 2) are your administrative controls sufficient, or do we need additional engineering controls, and 3) like skydiving 1000 (or 1600) times without incident if you do something enough times are you statistically going to eventually fail - hence the evaluation of do we need additional engineering controls...or do we find a substitution. Or do we not do it at all?

Jeff

Jeff

On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 12:55 PM James Kaufman <jkaufman**At_Symbol_Here**labsafetyinstitute.org> wrote:

That is very true.  

As Geraldine Cox, VP of Research for CMA, once said: "We ignore the risks of the things we want to do and invoke the risks of the things we don't want to do."  

I had little concern riding my two motorcycles (not at the same time)!  ... Jim

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On Tue, Oct 25, 2022 at 7:54 AM Ralph Stuart <ralph**At_Symbol_Here**rstuartcih.org> wrote:

> >I want to suggest another way of looking at this made popular by Trevor Kletz in Great Britain.  It's called the F.A.F.R. (fatal accident frequency rate).  It compares the deaths from different activities per unit time of exposure. 
>
I have seen many different denominators used in risk calculations, but none have been of particular interest to the people in the numerator, whether the risk is fatal, serious injuries, minor injuries or loss of productivity.

- Ralph

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