Some Other Guy wrote:
Thomas Borchert wrote:
Some,

A safety expert on the show mused that accident rates would plummet
if every car was equipped with a four-inch steel spike sticking out
of the middle of the steering wheel.

Uhm, accident rates DO plummet - with ABS and all the other safety
enhancements we have in modern cars. Now what does that do for the
theories of psychology experts?

Accident rates do NOT plummet according to the very link posted
earlier:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_homeostasis

Not only does the Wikipedia entry list one rebuttal to the theory, a
Google search for "risk homeostasis" yields several papers that find
evidence to the contrary, such as this one:

"The risk homeostasis theory posits, in essence, that a control
mechanism analogous to the thermal homeostatic system in warm-blooded
animals tends to keep risk per unit time constant, and, as a
consequence, the number of traffic accidents per unit time of driving
also tends to remain constant, essentially independent of changes in the
traffic safety system. It is the purpose of the present research to
examine the validity of this claim using a wide variety of traffic
accident data. All the data examined are found to be incompatible with
the risk homeostasis theory. The only specific field accident data
offered in the literature to support the risk homeostasis theory are
found to, in fact, refute the theory. The accident data provide evidence
that a rich variety of user responses occur. While it is possible for
users to collectively respond in such a way that safety benefits are
completely cancelled, such a response is not particularly common; it is
certainly not universally occurring, as suggested by the risk
homeostasis theory. It is concluded that the risk homeostasis theory
should be rejected because there is no convincing evidence supporting it
and much evidence refuting it."

From:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/en...o pt=Abstract