What Are The Riskiest Things In Your Life?

[OHGoDive]

But to identify the top three? I cannot do it. How do you manage risk if you can't really even come up with the biggies?

Perhaps that merely means that for most people living in an industrialized country, there really aren't any true risks... risks that have more than merely a remote chance of seriously damaging you. (Compare and contrast to running out for a newspaper in Baghdad.) I think that is why people, along with our media, like to inflate and sensationalize their risks, it keeps life from being too boring.

Not to say that the things that we do don't have some element of risk, they certainly do. But, the reality is that most people, the vast, vast majority of people, will never be seriously damaged by the things that they espouse to be the riskiest things in their lives. Especially when those things are recreational activities conducted in modern societies.

Just my opinion.

 

[teknitroxdiver]

Driving to work: 20 miles of 13% grades, 20 mph corners, and no shoulders.
Volunteering in New Orleans: Scary place at night.
Working around heavy machinery.

 

[cudachaser]

Driving I-95, I-4, I-75 in Florida

 

[drbill]

1. Driving ANY of LA's freeways

2. HIV and other serious STD's (no idea why I worry about this since I've been celibate for several years).

3. Thinking... no, I don't mean IT is risky, just trying to come up with a third.

 

[DennisS]

Interstates
Butter
Pyrotechnics

 

[Norm Cover]

At 53 years old, bicycling the country roads of CT and hitting speeds of 45 to 50 mph down hill on a regular basis is #1. Mountain biking on hilly, rocky single track trails is #2, working with high voltage and toxic chemicals on a daily basis is #3 and my 42 mile commute is #4. I dive to relax.

 

[H2Andy]

love is the riskiest thing in my life

there are quite a few people i love whose loss would be devastating

i can handle almost any physical pain (so far), and death is easy. emotional pain is far worse, and lasts much longer, and takes it out of you.

 

[scubafool]

Crap!

You're right!

 

[Scuba Do]

But, doesn't it seem like most people in this day and age of so much information should know the top three riskiest things in their life?

It's impossible to assess in this day and age what the riskiest things in your life are. Who would have thought that eating spinich would be risky? But, not long ago, it was. What else that we do all the time is risky and we do not even know it? Probably lots of things. Thus, you cannot live your life trying to avoid risks. They are everywhere. The issue do we manage the risks we face or are we simply foolish? Like riding bicycles in traffic. If you are a good rider with lots of experience and ride defensively, paying careful attention to where the cars are and where you are in relation to them, you have managed the risk. You are probably safer than some non-riders in less "risky" situations. If, on the other hand, you ride blindly down the road, weaving in and out of traffic, the risk is great. So, I would consider the riskies things those that we either don't or can't manage, which would include things for which we must rely on others (eating in restaurants, riding in cabs, buses, airplanes, etc., getting on elevators with strangers . . . and of course, our soldiers in harms way are at great risk because they cannot control what goes on around them).

 

[Tom Smedley]

The drive to work in the morning.