Analog May 1986 [antikvár]

IB, tditaidTHE PANK MENTALITYStanley SchmidtOne of the first editorials I wrote for this magazine ( ' ' Safety First, ' ' October 1979) dealt with what I saw as a disease of our culture: an obsession with safety at all costs. The symptoms I cited then included demands for the immediate shutdown of all nuclear reactors because one of them had a relatively severe (though nonfatal) accident, and the actual grounding of an entire species of aircraft because one plane of that type crashed. I haven't had any cause to change my diagnosis, but recently a number of other incidents have made me realize that those symptoms reflect another malady as wellone so closely related that it's sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, but nevertheless worthy of scrutiny and treatment in its own right.Not long ago, not far from where I live, a boy died in a school bus accident. He was not wearing a seat belt; theschool district involved had earlier decided not to require them for school bus passengers, partly because of studies which indicated that under the special circumstances prevailing on school buses seat belts did not significantly improve safety and in fact might have the opposite effect. But as soon as one local passenger died in an accident, parents throughout the area were up in arms demanding the immediate installation and compulsory use of seat belts on all seats of all school buses. Not immediate better studies to establish once and for all what, if any, advantage or disadvantage such a measure would have, but immediate action. Now, it's perfectly understandable that they were upset over the death, and it may well be that a really good study would confirm that what they're demanding really is the best thing to dobut that's not the point. The point is that nobody's sure, so far; yet one incident made these peo-4Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact