by Neil Schuster. president and CEO, American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators

How we handle risk is complicated, to say the least. And people do not all view and respond to risk in the same way. Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote The Tipping Point, wrote that we assume that identifying and eliminating a risk will improve safety. Possibly, but not always, partly because we have a “seemingly fundamental tendency to compensate for lower risks in one area by taking greater risks in another.”

An experiment with a fleet of taxis in Munich bears this out. Part of a fleet was equipped with antilock brakes (ABS), the remainder was left alone. Three years of observation showed that drivers with ABS became poorer drivers – they drove faster, they made sharper turns, they tailgated more often and they merged poorly. As a group, these drivers were in more near-collisions. ABS didn’t lead to safer taxi drivers, it led to inferior driving and a willingness to take more chances because they had ABS to back them up.

Similarly, Gladwell writes, more pedestrians are killed at marked crosswalks than at unmarked crossings. He concludes that pedestrians compensate for the safe environment of a marked crossing by being less vigilant about traffic (though I wonder if part of the reason is that more pedestrians use marked crosswalks). The same is true of childproof medicine bottle lids – the safer lids led to adults being more careless about leaving bottles within the reach of children, and more children died as a result.

Gladwell gives us another interesting example, this about how increased risk led to increased safety. In the late 1960’s, Sweden changed from driving on the left-hand side of the road to driving on the right. Logically, that brings with it the potential for more serious accidents. Instead, people compensated for this increased risk by driving more carefully. During the first year under right-hand-side drive, Sweden saw its road deaths drop 17 percent. Unfortunately, the rate slowly rose to previous levels, possibly as drivers became more familiar – and less cautious – with driving on the right.

So what does it mean for motor vehicle agencies in North America? AAMVA members must test new drivers on their ability to park a car, make turns and drive in traffic. Driver's license applicants also need to prove they understand traffic laws and the rules of the road to ensure safe driving. But how well do we know a new driver’s preference to adopt more risky behavior in less risky situations? Or a driver’s perception when he or she is in a higher-risk situation and should become a more careful driver?

As we acquire more safe driving technologies, will we take more risks when behind the wheel and become poorer drivers? If that is so, safety advocates, legislators and the public will look to motor vehicle administrators to solve the problem.