Risk Compensation: Implications for Safety Interventions

Several theories of driving behavior have suggested that individuals will react to environmental changes in a compensatory fashion such that riskier behaviors result from perceptions that the environment has become safer. Specifically, both Peltzman (1975) and Wilde (1982a) have proposed such compensation mechanisms, although Wilde takes a more stringent approach. Unfortunately, the majority of studies on the topic have attempted to test the compensation mechanism using aggregate accident data. Studies that have investigated risk compensation at the level of the individual have failed to assess subjective risk, a critical variable for the interpretation of the risk associated with specific behaviors. It is argued that risk compensation can only operate at the individual level and that previous studies testing the validity of risk compensation are difficult to interpret due to levels of analysis issues or unmeasured variables. In the current investigation, two judgment/decision making studies were designed to test risk compensation. Individual level analyses indicated that there was modest support for Peltzman's mild interpretation of the risk compensation mechanism, but that individuals do not compensate for changes in the environment enough to return to their original levels of risk as Wilde has predicted.