"Risk compensation" is not about the general kind of mitigation we all do all the time, it's a very specific concept related to the theory of risk homoeostasis, whereby humans have a desired level of risk and any additional mitigation techniques are counteracted by opposing behavioural changes. There are live arguments about the validity (or at least the universal applicability) of risk homoeostasis theory, and there is a lot of good behavioural work (and more to be done) on devising risk mitigation techniques for which populations will under-compensate, so that you are not, as moth points out above, just pissing money away.
Yes, accidents happen, that's why throughout this thread the serious commentators deride anecdote, since it tells us nothing about the statistical effects of various interventions across large populations. The randomness often turns out to have a pattern to it if you watch enough people for long enough.
So much fail, where to start?
"Risk compensation" is not about the general kind of mitigation we all do all the time, it's a very specific concept related to the theory of risk homoeostasis, whereby humans have a desired level of risk and any additional mitigation techniques are counteracted by opposing behavioural changes. There are live arguments about the validity (or at least the universal applicability) of risk homoeostasis theory, and there is a lot of good behavioural work (and more to be done) on devising risk mitigation techniques for which populations will under-compensate, so that you are not, as moth points out above, just pissing money away.
Yes, accidents happen, that's why throughout this thread the serious commentators deride anecdote, since it tells us nothing about the statistical effects of various interventions across large populations. The randomness often turns out to have a pattern to it if you watch enough people for long enough.