Safety First?
You might think it would be better for Pam and other high sensa-
tion-seekers to don safety equipment like a helmet. It would cer-
tainly make Pam’s skating adventures safer. Or would it? The
helmet may actually not help as much as you would think. It
seems that safety devices may actually increase a person’s possibi-
lity of risk-taking.^16 Making the activity safer doesn’t always make
the activity safe. Your perception of safety can influence how much
risk you take. This is known as risk compensation.^17 It means
people take more risks when they have equipment that protects
them. It’s been demonstrated with drivers using a car with or with-
out safety devices,^18 with kids in an obstacle course with or without
safety gear,^19 and even with cyclists going down a steep hill with or
without helmets.^20 In all of these cases, people with more safety
equipment took greater risks than those without. This might
explain why people with the latest self-driving robot cars fall asleep
or even climb over to the passenger side to take selfies.^21
Sometimes safety makes people complacent.The Crux of the Problem: The Real Reason High
Sensation-Seekers Seek Adventure
Timmy O’Neill has an extensive resume of thrill-seeking adven-
tures – from backcountry skiing to kayaking. Timmy has made
YouTube videos of himself scaling buildings in L.A. He’s speed-
climbed El Capitan, kayaked the length of the Grand Canyon
seven times, climbed buildings without ropes, and he’s taken
a few hits for it. He survived a 120-foot fall in 2000 while climbing
a granite formation in Pakistan. Timmy is also a professional come-
dian, as well as a philosopher of thrill. He told me that the reason he
attempts these high-risk activities was what he called “the crux.”
The wordcruxhas several definitions. A crux is a puzzling or
difficult situation. It’s also a crossroads. However, it also means “an
essential point requiring resolution,” and according to O’Neill, it
explains why people engage in risky thrill-seeking experiences.
Thrill-seekers put themselves in dangerous, shocking, and won-
drous situations, specifically because it forces them to find their
way out, down, or through.
This fear can be both a lock and a key. “Fear can prevent us
from doing the things we love and loving the things we do, but it72 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:19:03, subject to the Cambridge