Risk is an essential part of life’s very foundation. So it’s worth exploring in the context of training and psychology — and the maelstrom we have on our highways.

We all live with risk daily, some more successfully than others. Some folks embrace it while others prefer life in a cocoon. Most of us are in between, choosing moments where we figure more risk is tolerable — or the prize worth it. It’s a calculation, usually a subconscious one.

The question is, can we use this fact to our advantage in promoting safety? Yes, according to a leading psychologist. I’ll get to him in a minute.

I find this surprising, but my own ability to accept risk has increased with age. Or maybe it’s just some kinds of risk. And maybe those particular risks become more acceptable as experience makes me feel better able to handle particular endeavors.

For example, a few years back, as a guest, I took a course that taught ambulance drivers how to do evasive manoeuvres on the road at speed. I’d always been an enthusiastic driver, so this was pure fun. My instructor was impressed when I got an ambulance up on two wheels in the abrupt-lane-change test and back down again without incident. He gave me a silent thumbs-up from the shotgun seat. I was pumped.

The object was increased safety, but on the four-hour trip home I found myself driving faster than ever. The course had taught me how to handle a poorly balanced van, but it also made me more confident at the wheel generally. So when I got into my much smaller, much more responsive car, I felt 110% in charge. Even invincible.

Put another way, I was willing to take more risk precisely because I could do the driving job better. I felt I could safely stretch a little further toward calamity now than before taking the course. The same logic holds true when you first get anti-lock brakes on your car or truck, or air bags, or even new tires. The cushion between you and danger gets a little thicker. So you can drive faster, more aggressively, or in some other fashion that some might call reckless. You adjust your risk tolerance, precisely because you were used to a somewhat thinner cushion.

All of this has been explored much more comprehensively by professor Gerry Wilde at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., but his conclusions support my own: training alone cannot make drivers better and our roads safer. It’s a key component, for sure, because at least the more skilled driver has the opportunity to be the safer driver. Enforcement can be a part of the solution, too, but its effect doesn’t last: once the cruiser has disappeared, for example, the speedo needle goes back to 130. The other key component, says the diminutive Dr. Wilde, should be some incentive to make people lower what they see as acceptable risk.

Wilde has been in the news lately, quoted in Maclean’s magazine and elsewhere, but we actually reported on his research into risk almost 10 years ago. A year later he published a book — Target Risk — that has since seen a second edition and translation into other languages.

Wilde figures every time you drive any vehicle anywhere you accept some risk, and once you accept it you’ll adjust your driving to maintain the same level of risk. He calls it the “theory of risk homeostasis.” You drive faster on straight roads and faster still in light traffic until you’re driving at the level of risk you choose to accept. In a “better” car or truck you’ll drive faster on winding roads or in heavy traffic, and you’ll adjust your driving to compensate for every safety device you add. It’s that cushion again.

So, if we’re all driving progressively better and safer cars and trucks — yet routinely taking bigger risks as a result — what’s happening with accident rates? The accident rate per 100,000 miles is dropping, Wilde allows, but the accident rate per 100,000 people has stayed about the same since the 1920s.

Wilde concludes that we can modify on-the-road behavior by changing the level of risk drivers are willing to accept. Make the cost of accidents more expensive, in other words, and people will have fewer of them. Or make safety pay (literally) through meaningful incentives and improvements will come.

I’m going to be exploring this idea further, and I’d urge you to do the same in your own situation. What incentives could you offer to alter the risks you or your drivers are willing to accept? Let me know what you come up with.