A lot of people — now, more than ever — have concerns about the risks involved in travel. But they’re usually worried about the wrong things.
For example: in the wake of the Ebola epidemic, countries like Botswana, Kenya and South Africa suffered a massive fall in tourist bookings. The Economist (“The ignorance epidemic”, 15/11/14) pointed out that these destinations were thousands of kilometres from the epicentre of the Ebola infection, Sierra Leone in West Africa…further than New York is from San Francisco. Can you imagine any rational person cancelling a trip to California because there was an epidemic in Manhattan?
Here’s another famous example of travel-related panic. Maia Szalavitz in Psychology Today wrote that “After 9/11, 1.4 million people changed their holiday travel plans to avoid flying. The vast majority chose to drive instead. But driving is far more dangerous than flying, and the decision to switch caused roughly 1,000 additional auto fatalities, according to two separate analyses…in other words, 1,000 people who chose to drive wouldn’t have died had they flown instead.”
During Hurricane Katrina, some residents of New Orleans stayed put instead of fleeing. Some lost their homes, and some their lives, as a consequence. The popular explanation was that they were poor, largely black, and didn’t have automobiles, so they were stuck in the city. But later research showed that in fact what they had in common was their age: they were mostly old-timers who’d seen a heap of hurricanes in their lifetime. For them, a hurricane wasn’t a big, strange, scary event — it was something they’d survived a dozen times before. So they backed their own judgment and personal experience against the experts’ advice, with devastating consequences.
In spite of epidemics and natural disasters, the fact is that we’re safer than we’ve ever been. Unless you live in one of a handful of truly awful countries, you’ll enjoy a longer, healthier and more comfortable life than your ancestors ever did.
Nevertheless, a lot of people still believe that the world is a threatening place, and that danger lurks everywhere. One writer calls this “the crime wave in our heads”. Why, in the face of all the evidence, are we so scared so much of the time? Well, the media know that good news is no news — and politicians have always found fear a reliable vote-winner. Nearly a century ago H. L. Mencken wrote “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed…”
Fear can be useful. But because we’re human, it’s often irrational. We’ve all read the statistics — you know you’re safer in a plane than in a car, but nobody has white knuckles on the way to the supermarket. You probably know, too, that legal drugs like alcohol do far more physical (and economic) damage to society than heroin or crack. But familiar, everyday vices seem less dangerous.
The facts don’t change the way we feel. (They certainly didn’t convince those old-timers in New Orleans.) And then there’s something called confirmation bias: the natural human tendency to seek out and believe “information” that confirms what we already believe. So if the data contradicts your existing beliefs, you disregard it.
For instance, “stranger danger” — you know, the weird guy who lurks outside the playground, waiting to kidnap or murder your kids.
In fact, the latest available statistics show that of all children who are murdered under the age of 5 in the US, only 3% are murdered by strangers. The other 97% are murdered by relatives or family friends.
As for kidnapping, the vast majority of child disappearances in the US are either runaways or kidnappings by a parent. In the latest year for which statistics are available, the number of “genuine” child kidnappings by strangers in the country — the whole country — was just 115.
Lenore Skenazy, a New York journalist and blogger*, crunched the numbers and worked out how long it would take before your child was abducted by a stranger, if you left him/her alone on a street corner in Manhattan. The answer was: around 750,000 years.
The inescapable conclusion is that Uncle Harry is a bigger worry than the creep in the grubby raincoat. Logically, you should leave your kids with strangers rather than family or friends. And if you want them to be really safe, don’t drive them to school — let them walk.
In general, research shows that we’re most frightened of something unfamiliar; something big and dramatic; something we can’t control.
So, which is scarier?
A terrorist attack Bees
Mad cow disease Measles
Plane travel Having a bath
No prizes for guessing that in each case the second option is the deadlier. But these things are counter-intuitive. In your car, you’re in control; in a plane, someone else is. Measles are kid stuff; mad cow disease is weird. FYI, no one in the US has ever died from it. Also, if you live in the US, you’re 4,250 times more likely to be a victim of gun violence than be killed in a terrorist attack. In fact, bees kill more people — as do bathtubs, and even sofas!
Still, travellers are preoccupied with terrorism at the moment. Nobody seems able to agree on what exactly terrorism is; the debate may go on forever. But in the meantime, the statistics are clear: large-scale, organised attacks by recognised terrorist groups are most likely to take place in a Muslim country, and to kill mostly Muslims. (Ours not to reason why.)
By contrast, we see random attacks all over the world by deranged ratbags who presumably got up one morning and asked themselves whether they’d rather be remembered as (a) a disaffected loony who killed a lot of people, or (b) a heroic martyr who died fighting for a noble cause.
Unsurprisingly, option (b) often wins. The “noble cause” — which may not know the loony from Adam — promptly takes the credit anyway. At this point the event is labelled a terrorist attack, which only reinforces our belief that armies of fanatics threaten us on every side.
But whatever we choose to call these attacks, they can happen anywhere…including where you live, or work, or shop. So this isn’t really a travel-related issue, and staying home isn’t the solution.
That’s not to say “If we all stay home the terrorists have won.” (They already have, as you’ll know if you’ve taken an international flight in recent years. But don’t get me started on airport security.) Rather, it means use your judgement. Go, or stay home? As David Ogilvy famously said, “Thinking is hard work. That’s why so few people do it.”
Of course there are genuinely dangerous places out there, but they probably aren’t the ones you were planning to visit anyway. So take a deep breath, look at the facts, ignore your instincts and think about whether your fears are rational. Bearing in mind that anywhere, including home, can be dangerous if you’re careless…or just plain unlucky.
Yes, strange is scary. But the familiar is a lot more likely to kill you.
*freerangekids.com