Voluntary risk and Control

A person is said to take ‘VOLUNTARY RISK’

-when he is subjected to risk by either his own actions or action taken by others and

-volunteers to take that risk without any apprehension.

-For  example,  John  and  Ann  Smith  enjoy  riding  motorcycles  over  rough  ground  for amusement. They take voluntary risk, part of being engaged in such a potentially dangerous sport.

Connected to this notion of voluntarism is the matter of Control. In the example cited, the Smiths are aware of the high probability of accident figures in such a sport, but they display characteristically unrealistic confidence of most people when they believe the dangers to be under their control. In terms of  engineering as social experimentation, people are more willing to be the subjects of their own experiments than of someone else’s (whether social experiment or not).

Chauncey Starr informs us that individuals are more ready to assume voluntary risks than involuntary risks, even when voluntary risks are 1000 times more likely to produce a fatality than the involuntary ones.

A DISASTER = A seriously disruptive event + A state of unprepared ness.

e.g., Titanic collision with an iceberg,  at night: Emergency

Fewer lifeboats, inadequate training and                warnings of icebergs unheeded -> Disaster.