Health Risk Appraisal in the 1990s: Opportunities, Challenges, and Expectations

Abstract

As the news of the California earthquake of October 17, 1989 broke, and as we saw pictures of the destruction in San Francisco/Oakland and heard the horrible predictions of lives likely lost on Interstate Highway 880 (the Nimitz Freeway) in Oakland, we began to lose hope that anyone who happened to be driving on the lower deck of that highway would survive. Miraculously, four days later, rescue workers managed to find and bring out a single individual who just happened to be wearing his seatbelt when his car was trapped in the falling highway structure. Many of the other passengers of automobiles trapped under the Nimitz Freeway who had been rescued in the first few hours following the earthquake were reported to have been saved by their seatbelts which prevented them from being thrown through their automobile wind­ shields upon impact. Although they suffered substantial bums from the impact of their seatbelts across their shoulders and chests, they did survive! This event, captured repeatedly over a several-day period on the in­ ternational news media, dramatized and made real what most people know­ wearing a safety belt greatly. reduces the risk of injury or death in a motor vehicle accident. It underscored the substantial differences in relative risk of those who do and those who do not practice such simple preventive behaviors on a daily basis.