From a philosophical point of view the value of any life, no matter age, race or gender is
infinite; on this most individuals in society can agree and this will without further discussions
be considered a basic fact in the further.
However, safety has a cost – as is already known and shall be discussed in the following –
and therefore the level of safety to be guaranteed for the individual members of society is a
societal decision with a strong bearing to what the society can afford; despite the fact that
society considers the value of each individual person in society to be infinite, society only has
limited resources at hand and thus must prioritize. Each decision maker representing society
or parts hereof has certain boundary conditions or limitations to the decisions which she/he
may make However, with reference to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”,
representatives of society have a general moral obligation to consider all investments and
expenditures in the light of the question “could the resources have been spend better” in the
attempt to meet the aim of this declaration.
Preferences in decision making
When discussing the issue of “acceptable risks” the issue is often confused by the fact that
some individuals may have a different viewpoint to what is acceptable as compared to the
viewpoint of the society. Each individual has its own perception of risk, or as expressed in
decision theoretical terms, its own “preferences”. Considering the acceptability of activities
related to civil engineering or any other activities with possible implications to third parties
for that matter the main question is not the preferences of the individual member of society
but rather the preferences of the society as expressed by the “Universal Declaration of Human
Rights” or some other generally agreed convention. The preferences of individuals may in
fact be in gross contradiction with the preferences of society and it is necessary to view
acceptability from a societal angle, yet at the same time ensuring that the basic human rights
of individuals are safeguarded. This calls for a normative approach to the modelling of
preferences and for the identification of criteria for risk acceptance. It is important to
appreciate the difference. As most persons surely appreciate from their own experiences the
issue of how large risks can be accepted is a highly subjective issue – depending on the
preferences of the individual. The preferences of the individual depend on their situation
(societal, status, wealth, education, family, etc). A classical example illustrating this aspect
relates to the risks not accepted by the British fighter pilots during the 2nd world war. At some
stage during the war a group of pilots refused to perform their missions due to a relatively
high degree of engine failures resulting in “crashes”. This in itself is not strange but when it is
seen in the light that the cause of deaths for the pilots due to engaged air combat was 5 times
more frequent than that of engine failure it is obvious that personal preferences shall be
considered as being very individual. A full discussion of preferences is a highly philosophical
issue and beyond the scope of the present text. The interested reader is referred to the text of
Harsanyi (1992) for a more detailed treatment. In general it can be said that preferences may
be assessed based on different types of information.
Questionnaires or interviews may provide what are commonly denoted as preferences.
Analysis of statistics relating to causes of death in different types of activities as well as