Getting back to risk sanity

By: drivers.com staff
Date: Tuesday, 08. May 2007

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Getting back to normal isn't going to be easy! While the host of a CNN talk show criticizes President Bush for agreeing to close the white house to the public, and at the same time urging the country to get back to normal, an Op-ed article in the Washington Post compares some everyday risks with the risks of a terrorist attack.

Michael Rothschild, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin's business school, points out that if one commercial jet were hijacked and crashed every week, the odds of any particular individual being on that plane would be about 135,000 to one. The odds of being killed in a car crash, he says, are far greater at 7,000 to one and the odds of dying from Cancer are 600 to one. "We have learned to live with these common threats to our health, yet we have been afraid to return to the malls and the skies."

The economic cost to the U.S. of over-reaction to terrorism has been enormous in terms of lost jobs and lost business, Rothschild says. "Our leaders and media have not done a good job of discussing the risks that citizens need to consider when making choices in their daily lives."

In a related article, Drivers.com takes a look at how the emerging field of Risk Communication sees the current problem of putting our sense of risk back in balance. Read the Washington Post article.

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