Peltzman Effect

Personally i have always wonder about how we should really be designing. Should we be making everything easier and safer? During my thesis I kept wondering should i design a product that is impact resistance and communicate it by adding bolts, exposing o-rings, chamfer edges etc or should i design such that it is impact resistance but look really precious so that people will not mishandle it. I went for the 2nd option. In my mind i know that if i make it look tough, user will inevitably offset the impact resistance features by being less cautious with it. I just found out there's actually a name for such an effect.

The Peltzman effect is the hypothesized tendency of people to react to a safety regulation by increasing other risky behavior, offsetting some or all of the benefit of the regulation. It is named after Sam Peltzman, a professor of Economics at University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

This will help explain why certain countries can survive with almost non existence traffic regulations. In fact i remember reading a book which mentioned that a certain town actually removed all it's traffic lights to deal with it's rising traffic accident rate and it worked.

I hope you recognise this behavior doesn't only applies to area of traffic or transport, but in general, the safer you feel, the more risk you are willing to take. And this will inevitably offset or over compensate the safety features provided.