Hidden risks of the safe choice: The 28-hour drive.
The hidden risks of the safe choice are the dangers nobody measures because they feel quiet. After escaping Irma, the author drove twenty-eight hours to Atlanta. Because he had been awake over forty-eight hours, that drive carried a risk nobody priced.
Running into the storm's real path.
The plane took him into Florida, where about seven million residents were evacuated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, Irma's eye never crossed Grand Bahama. Instead, it hit the Keys. So the island he fled was spared the eye, while the state he reached was not.
What exhaustion does behind the wheel.
In 1997, Dawson and Reid compared exhaustion with alcohol in Nature. After seventeen hours awake, performance matched 0.05 per cent blood alcohol. After twenty-four hours, it matched 0.10 per cent. That drowsy driving vs drunk driving comparison shows how real his risk was, with 740 milligrams of caffeine on top.
Hidden risks of the safe choice in your life.
Your version of that car probably has no steering wheel. For example, it might be the job you keep because leaving looks like a hurricane. The risk of staying in your job feels like the plane, since nobody puts it on the news. Also, it might be savings sitting untouched in the bank.
Name the hidden risks of the safe choice you made.
List each safe choice you are making instead of starting your business.
Next to each one, write one danger it could carry that nobody has measured.
From the book.
Your version of that car probably doesn't have a steering wheel. It might be the job you keep because leaving looks like a hurricane, or the savings you leave in the bank because your business idea looks like a storm. Each of those feels like the plane to you, because nobody puts them on the news. Are you sure none of them is the drive?
I Want to Start a Business but I'm a Coward, chapter 1: The safer road
Questions about hidden risks of the safe choice.
What were the hidden risks of the safe choice for the author?
A twenty-eight-hour drive on unfamiliar roads after being awake more than forty-eight hours.
How does being awake compare with drinking?
Dawson and Reid found twenty-four hours awake matched about 0.10 per cent blood alcohol.
How much caffeine did the author have?
About 740 milligrams, nearly twice the 400 a day the US Food and Drug Administration cites for most adults.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 1, “The safer road”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 9 11 driving deaths: Where fear really moved people.
- 02 Probability neglect: Why vivid fears ignore the odds.
- 03 Panic decisions under pressure: The Irma escape.
- 04 Hidden risks of the safe choice: The 28-hour drive.
- 05 When fear is rational: Ask this question first.
- 06 Compare risk of quitting vs staying: Two numbers.
- 07 Count vs rate statistics: Five traps to avoid.