A rational approach to public safety

The proposed approach considers safety from the point of view of the victims, i.e. the public. It is taken as axiomatic that all premature loss of life is equal and that the cost of public safety measures falls in the last analysis on the public. The effort to counter risk is considered to be divided into many safety activities and sub-activities. At present, there is virtually no coordination between activities, but sub-activities are effectively compared with each other within each activity. If an activity is organized for best efficiency, its sub-activities would be carried out in order of diminishing return for money, or in other words in increasing cost per extra statistical life saved (CSX), up to a cut-off point. Evidence is quoted which indicates that, at present, the CSX at cut-off varies over several orders of magnitude between different activities. It is suggested that it is the ease or otherwise with which money can be made available for the activity which accounts for this wide range. If these activities with a high terminal CSX are cut back and the money saved is diverted to activities of low CSX, it appears that large amounts of money could be saved for the same overall cost. These measures simply amount to spending money when it will save most lives. The implementation of these ideas is discussed. (author)