Topic: Why we should design some things to be Difficult to use

[aquadorhj]

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/on-the-joy-of-mastery/

Risk Homeostasis....   

here's an excerpt from the article :
3. Danger May Be Safer
Last month, one of the smartest economists in the world passed away. His name was Gordon Tullock. He spent his life studying how people made choices, and that led him to rethink everything we know about risk.

He showed that people have a fairly consistent attitude to danger. If you make an activity safer, people push the limits of that activity to bring the risk back up to a level they find accessible. Take driving. Put ABS brakes in a car, and people just tend to brake later, and less. Traction control just makes us less careful in slippery conditions. Risk homeostasis, as it’s known, has been observed everywhere from football helmets to oilrigs.

Some say that Tullock came up with a fabulous piece of design logic: if you want to reduce accidents, install a sharp spike pointing outwards from the steering wheel of every car, aimed at the driver’s heart.

User friendly? No. But it would certainly make everybody drive very, very carefully.

 


something we've all suspected, on autos..  someone who studied risks all his life confirms it.

Now we should ban airbags, ABS, TC, winter tires...  make everything more difficult about driving, and it will be a safer road...   

[Great_Big_Abyss]

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/on-the-joy-of-mastery/

Risk Homeostasis....   

here's an excerpt from the article :
3. Danger May Be Safer
Last month, one of the smartest economists in the world passed away. His name was Gordon Tullock. He spent his life studying how people made choices, and that led him to rethink everything we know about risk.

He showed that people have a fairly consistent attitude to danger. If you make an activity safer, people push the limits of that activity to bring the risk back up to a level they find accessible. Take driving. Put ABS brakes in a car, and people just tend to brake later, and less. Traction control just makes us less careful in slippery conditions. Risk homeostasis, as it’s known, has been observed everywhere from football helmets to oilrigs.

Some say that Tullock came up with a fabulous piece of design logic: if you want to reduce accidents, install a sharp spike pointing outwards from the steering wheel of every car, aimed at the driver’s heart.

User friendly? No. But it would certainly make everybody drive very, very carefully.

 


something we've all suspected, on autos..  someone who studied risks all his life confirms it.

Now we should ban airbags, ABS, TC, winter tires...  make everything more difficult about driving, and it will be a safer road...   

Last Winter I had my Ford Ranger.  It was 4x4, the ABS was disabled (broken sensor), had no traction or stability control, had All Terrain tires which were hell on slippery roads (great in deep snow though), and TONS of low-end torque even in top gear.

Never was there a more careful and cautious person on the highways than myself driving that truck.  I never drove in 4x4 on the highway (impossible to regain control when you finally 'lose it', and I was ALWAYS vigilant to what the back end was doing.  Anytime I would sense something fishy going on at the rear end of the truck I would slow down to 80 until I felt more comfortable, etc. etc. 

Fast forward a year.  Now I find myself throwing caution to the wind and putting most of my trust in the excellent WS-80's and stability control system of the Altima.  So, yes, the article is correct.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still vigilant and observant as to what is going on around me, but I'm less concerned with the dynamics of the vehicle and what it is doing than I was with the truck.