Healthy, wealthy - and very afraid

Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner

WITH THIS book on risk, which is terrific, Dan Gardner considers the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. After the attacks, he points out, many Americans considered flying to be a serious risk. So instead of flying, they got into their cars and drove to their destinations.

For a year, there was more traffic on the roads. The result of this was a huge increase in accidents. In fact, in the year after 9/11, it has been calculated, 1,595 people died on the roads as a result of fear. That's around half the death toll in the Twin Towers. Avoiding planes, even in the era of al Qaeda, is, it turns out, a risky thing to do.

This is a book about why human beings are very bad at understanding risk. We think cars are safe, when they're not, and we think planes are dangerous, when they're not. Imagine if terrorists hijacked and crashed one American plane every month. And imagine you flew once a month for a year. Do you know what your chance of dying in one of those planes would be? One in 135,000. These are much better odds than you would face on the roads.

Every year, an average American has a one in 6,000 chance of being killed in a road accident.

But think what happens in the wake of a terrorist event. The news media, eager to get your attention, have an interest in stoking your fear. Politicians see opportunities to pass new laws. People keep showing you pictures of death and destruction, which lodge in your brain.

When terrorists attack, people love to talk about it, because it bonds them together. When cars crash, on the other hand, almost nobody has a vested interest in stoking the public's fear. So we have a completely skewed idea of how dangerous they are.

It's the same with lots of other things, too. Earthquakes happen very occasionally, as a result of the movement of the earth's tectonic plates. The plates move because of pressure from the earth's core. After they've moved, they tend to settle down. So if you live in San Francisco and there's just been one in your area, you should feel relatively safe.

And if there hasn't been one for a while, you should feel much less safe. So when is a good time to take out a policy insuring you against earthquakes? When there hasn't been one for a while, of course. Actually, people tend to buy such policies immediately after earthquakes. When it comes to risks, we have no idea.

Why is this? Gardner explains it all.

As a writer, he's exceptionally good - he has the clarity of Malcolm Gladwell, a writer whose work he cites. He takes you through a maze of difficult academic work, and makes it seem simple. He tells us that, even though we live in a world of instant information and large numbers of media outlets, our brains have not evolved since the Stone Age. So when we see pictures of death and destruction, over and over again, it terrifies us. There is still a part of our brains that can't shake off the feeling that, when something seems to be happening a lot, it is happening a lot.

"We are the healthiest, wealthiest, and longest-lived people in history," says Gardner. "And we are increasingly afraid. This is one of the great paradoxes of our time." The message: when assessing risks, we should try not to go with our kneejerk reactions. We should think about whose interest it serves to make us worry. We should remember that we are Stone Age people living in a digital age. And, I suppose, if you do want something to fear, be afraid of those damn politicians.