Reckless males

Once again it's revealed that male drivers are far more likely to have serious accidents than female drivers. It seems they're more aggressive, more impatient and more reckless. Which no doubt all women drivers are well aware of.

Way back in 2022 a Guardian survey discovered that male drivers in the UK are almost three times as likely as women to be involved in accidents that kill or seriously injure pedestrians. French and American surveys confirm this huge difference.

I'm glad to say that although I've been driving on and off for almost sixty years I've never had a serious accident and I certainly haven't injured anyone. I'm probably not quite as cautious or focused as Jenny but I don't take unnecessary risks like dangerous overtaking, going through red lights or using a phone while driving.

A lot of men seem to regard reckless driving as a masculine imperative, while concern for safety and survival take a back seat. Over and over again I encounter other male drivers swerving into my lane without warning, tailgating me or hurtling past me at a crazy speed.

Women seem to be much more safety conscious and more aware of how easily a single hazardous manoeuvre could have disastrous consequences, especially if they're more likely to have children or a baby in the car than a man.

As a French road safety campaign tells men "Conduisez comme une femme". Drive like a woman. But will men take any notice?

High risk

I always wonder what it's like to live with someone in a high risk occupation, or who enjoys high-risk pastimes. Does it terrify them or do they just take it in their stride?

I imagine they must be always scared stiff that their partner will sooner or later have a serious accident and end up either dead or disabled. It would be hard to take it in your stride when there's a very real risk that today might be their last day ever. And if you have children then the possibility of their losing their father is an added worry.

I had a friend once whose husband was a police officer, and I don't think she ever lost her terror of his dying on the job. He worked in a city where acts of violence were common and many police officers had been injured or killed.

The number of high-risk occupations is large. Police, fire fighters, the military, construction, bomb disposal officers, jobs involving hazardous materials, working in a covid ward. Plus the high-risk pastimes like sky-diving, rock-climbing, bungee-jumping and potholing. So there must be many anxious partners out there, trying to suppress their fears and just carry on with their daily life.

Do they try to persuade their partners to do something less risky or do they accept that they love what they do so much they couldn't possibly give it up?

Luckily neither Jenny or I have had high-risk jobs or pastimes. I wonder how I would have coped if Jenny had been a police officer, say. I suspect the answer is not very well. I would have had feverish imaginings of her being caught in some melee involving guns and knives and ruthless criminals. Carrying on with my daily life would have been quite a struggle.

Pic: Israeli police woman

Survival instinct

We humans are said to have a survival instinct that keeps us alive in dangerous situations. However daunting the odds, however desperate everything seems, when the chips are down, we'll always struggle to stay alive.

Well, that's debatable to say the least. There are plenty of examples of people who seem to have no survival instinct whatever. People who commit suicide, who are keen on extreme sports, who drive too fast or take unfamiliar drugs. Or for that matter refuse to follow basic safety measures in a pandemic.

People die every day because they give little thought to survival and simply do what they feel like doing.

I wouldn't say I have much of a survival instinct. What I have is more a problem-avoidance instinct. I don't want to do anything that might jeopardise my physical or mental health and make my life a problem for myself and other people around me. I don't want to become a burden or a nuisance or an object of pity.

Not that any possible survival instinct has ever been seriously tested. I've never been trapped in a burning house, kept prisoner in a locked basement or been stranded on a mountain top. I've never had to survive more than busy main roads or too much alcohol or gnawing hunger.

Mind you, the survival instinct isn't just about physical survival. It can also mean mental and emotional survival. Can you survive abusive parents or an aggressive boss or a domineering spouse without crumbling psychologically?

I've survived in that sense several times in my life. So maybe I have a survival instinct of sorts, just not the one people normally think of.

I've been lucky enough never to lose my mind.

Playing safe

I used to think I had a strong instinct for self-preservation, which is why I've resisted all those things that spoil other people's lives - like eating too much, drinking too much, abusing drugs, slipping into a couch potato lifestyle.

But when I look a bit more closely, I have to admit it wasn't self-preservation that steered me away from all these habits but other quite random personal characteristics that aren't so impressive.

Eating too much makes me feel queasy and unwell. Drinking too much totally numbs my brain. Drugs might have claimed me if it wasn't for not knowing where to get them. And I could have been a couch potato if it wasn't for the physical restlessness that stops me sitting for very long.

Although we humans are supposed to have a strong self-preservation instinct, actually I think it's pretty feeble and often overwhelmed by our tendency to act on impulse regardless of the consequences. Especially when we just want to enjoy ourselves.

All the time I see people doing amazingly risky things, blatantly dicing with death and injury, oblivious to self-preservation. Motorists overtaking on blind bends, jaywalking pedestrians, drunks about to totter off station platforms, householders on wobbly ladders. They defy all the dangers, convinced they won't come to any harm. Or not even caring if they come to harm or not.

The honest truth is that often I'm as impulsive and reckless as the next person, and self-preservation is the last thing on my mind. If I've never come to any serious harm in my life, it's really more luck than judgment. I can stop feeling self-righteous because I'm not as canny as I think.

Another smug self-appraisal bites the dust.

Safety first

It's a strange paradox that although we all want to feel safe and secure and protected, at the same time we do things that are absurdly reckless and dangerous.

We want to feel safe. We want to know that whatever life throws at us, whatever misfortunes we run into, we'll survive the challenges and our lives won't be ruined or ripped apart.

We seek dependable partners, we accumulate money, we buy houses, we surround ourselves with friends, we live somewhere peaceful and civilised, we look for secure long-term jobs, we avoid people we find difficult or disturbing.

At the same time though, we constantly do things that threaten our safety, put our lives at risk, and jeopardise everything we hold dear. There's a part of us that chafes at the endless safety-first approach and yearns for a bit of adventure and excitement and throwing all caution to the winds.

So we find ourselves getting hopelessly drunk, driving at crazy speeds (or both), chain smoking, jaywalking, getting into fights (well, the guys anyway), climbing wobbly ladders, not to mention bungee-jumping, sky-diving, rock-climbing and snorkelling.

I freely admit to driving too fast (on occasion), to jaywalking, to climbing wobbly ladders. And a few other reckless habits. I mean, they're not really THAT dangerous. I haven't come a cropper yet, have I? So there you are then. No need to worry.

Of course the other paradox is that it's often the thrill-seekers, the ones forever putting themselves in danger, who live to tell the tale, while Cautious Clara is unlucky enough to kill herself in a freak accident involving a faulty safety harness.

We all want to be safe. Except when we don't.

Risk assessment

My attitude to risk is very contradictory. Some highly risky things don't bother me at all. Others bother me a lot, probably more than they ought to.

I have no qualms about flying, even right across the world. I know there's always a risk of crashes, of fires, of hijacks. But statistically it's the safest form of travel and I have every confidence my next flight will be disaster-free.

I'm okay with driving too. I know that's a very dangerous form of travel, and that serious, possibly fatal, accidents occur all the time. But I'm confident that as long as I'm always alert and attentive, catastrophe is unlikely.

On the other hand, I'm very nervous about hospitals and operations. I'm aware that most operations are routine and successful, but I'm rather too aware of the small percentage that go horribly wrong and leave you in a worse state than before - or even dead. I mean, just suppose I'm one of that small percentage?

I'm also wary of financial risk. I keep my money in the bank and that's it. I'm suspicious of investments and fancy money-making schemes that may go suddenly pear-shaped, swallow up all my money and leave me penniless.

I can be very timid about making big changes in my life, be it a new job, a new home, even a new political allegiance. It might seem like a positive move, it might enhance my life, but what are the unforeseen consequences? Could I be making a reckless mistake, one I live to regret?

Oddly enough though, I was quite sure that moving from London to Belfast was the right thing to do, even though I had no job to go to, I had no relatives living there, and the peace process was only in its early stages. I somehow had confidence it would all work out, and it did.

Why am I quite nonchalant about some risks and over-anxious about others? Why am I so inconsistent? The vagaries of the human mind are a constant puzzle.

A yen for risk

I'm fascinated by the way people crave risk as much as they crave safety. Human nature demands this strange contra-diction.

On the one hand we want safety. We want a home, a job, friends and family, things that make us feel protected and secure, things that ward off the horrors and uncertainties of the outside world.

But at the same time we don't want to feel too staid and set in our ways, we want a bit of excitement in our lives, so we also want risk. We drink too much, eat too much, drive recklessly and take dangerous drugs, busily compromising the very same safety and security we're striving for the rest of the time.

Some people go farther. The reliable bank clerk and home-owner who also has a yen for rock climbing, sky diving, bungee jumping or surfing. Or even a fervent desire to work in war-torn countries where they face death every day. They can only take so much safety and security before they crave the exact opposite, something that is physically threatening but gets the adrenaline going like nothing else.

Personally I have a strong yearning for safety, and I steer away from risk. I'm a timid soul who seldom does anything riskier than exceeding the speed limit or standing on a cliff-edge.

If I feel any sense of risk in my life, it's only the vicarious danger oozing from the media, with its screaming headlines about cancer epidemics, plane crashes, multiple pile-ups and mass shootings.

I guess that's one reason we're all such avid news-consumers. It gives us that exhilarating whiff of looming peril that livens up our usually predictable existence. It persuades us we're taking constant risks when in fact we've never been safer.

But I think I'll pass on the bungee-jumping for now, if that's all right with you.

Not a coward

Is it wrong to call someone a coward? Is it just mean and unfair and insulting? If someone doesn't want to do something that's dangerous, shouldn't we respect their decision and not simply condemn them for it?

We all have different personalities. We each have our strengths and weaknesses, our particular resources and lack of them. Isn't it up to us to decide if we're capable of dealing with something, to estimate the dangers and consequences, and if we don't feel confident enough, to opt out and say we're not going to take the risk?

It's pretty high-handed and presumptuous of other people to say that someone is a coward, that they should have done what was expected of them regardless of their personal fears and uncertainties, that they should have jumped in and hoped for the best, and if they came a cropper that was just bad luck.

But if say, a woman was being gang-raped on a train by a bunch of particularly nasty-looking men, would we say it was our duty to tackle the rapists even if they might attack us too? If we saw someone inside a burning building, would it be our duty to run in and try to rescue them, even at the risk of being burnt alive? Surely that's the individual's decision and for someone else to accuse them of cowardice is impudent and uncalled-for. It's really an incredibly rude thing to say.

The flipside is that we heap lavish praise on someone we see as brave and courageous and fearless, as if they're some sort of super-hero, when in reality they may only have been doing their job, or only showing their natural strength and resilience. Why is someone "brave" given so much more respect than someone who's been less than brave - or not brave at all? Can't we just respect people's different capabilities and shortcomings? Why must cowardice be a cause for shame?

Affair assumption

At my grand old age, people must assume I've had several affairs, that at some time or another I must have been carrying on behind Jenny's back. But I never have.

It's partly because I'm just not devious or cunning enough to keep an affair secret. It's partly because I never had the energy to keep two women on the go at once. And it's partly because I've never been besotted enough with another woman to want a serious fling. I'm obviously an engrained monogamist.

Well, it's difficult enough keeping one relationship going, if you're serious about making it work and giving the other person the tender loving care they expect.

How people manage to do that twice over I don't know. I suspect they don't, that one or the other partner always gets short shrift, marginalised and neglected and frustrated.

But I'm amazed how affairs can be kept secret for so long. You hear of affairs that lasted five or ten years without the husband or wife ever knowing. How can anyone really close to their partner not pick up on suspicious behaviour pretty early on?

I'm sure I couldn't have had an affair for more than a week without leaving Jenny some fatal clue - a mysterious phone message or an unfamiliar fragrance or a dubious-sounding 'engagement'. I expect my face alone would give me away, as I'm not good at hiding my emotions.

Some people actually relish the danger, the frisson of a clandestine mate their regular squeeze is unaware of. But I couldn't stand the stress and strain myself, it would destroy all the pleasure.

No, I'm as clean as a whistle in that respect. Boringly loyal and devoted and dependable. Even though I'm a hopeless rebel in so many other ways.