A race car driver going it over 100 mph can safely navigate within inches of another car. Not so an older impaired driver on an expressway. Safety margin varies with conditions and expertise .
It is natural to “dumb down” safety margin to the lowest (legal) common denominator. In theory, road speed limits are set for normal people and normal cars. Unfortunately, theory is usually easily abused, especially when “experts” are not quite sure themselves. Even more so when jobs or legal issues are on the line .
We have reached an era when “safety margin” has metastasized into insanity. “Just to be safe” applied recursively to more and more of life, leads to ridiculous recommendations and either paralysis of attempting anything or simply ignoring advice totally .
Such seems to be the case with, for example, ultra processed foods, alcohol consumption, or exercise. It’s very hard to get a “ straight” medical answer to anything. A lot of experts “explain” things in such a way that they almost expect to be wrong and want their counsel in such a case to appear blameless.
Intertwined with all this is an astounding ignorance of a sense of proportion. Doubling a chance of being hit by lightning (even if the infinitesimal risk is not exaggerated) is of no use to anyone at all unless they are already working as a steeplejack .
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 