With it being Brain Injury Awareness month in Canada, I have been on a media blitz over the last two weeks speaking out on the importance of prevention, specifically around the use of ATV’s as this is how I sustained a traumatic brain injury in 2001. You can find all the articles as well as links to the audio and video here.
I am grateful that the media approached me requesting interviews and that they feel this is a conversation that needs to happen now.
I know that many of you are genuinely interested in learning more about what you can do to stay safe while enjoying this popular outdoor recreational activity and that you’re aware of the link between safety and your quality of life.
While this was going on, I received many comments from listeners, readers and viewers that made me aware of just how many different and broad views are out there when it comes to safety and ways we can collectively address the issues that are contributing to the high injury and death rates for ATV riders.
Some of the comments were from people who favoured implementing ATV safety legislation in Alberta, the province I live in that currently has no safety legislation in place, others came at it from the opposite direction saying it’s increased education that is needed versus any law.
A few people also mentioned they feel that it is simply a matter of having common sense and that this could prevent many injuries.
This raised a few interesting questions for me.
Is it more important to have common sense or to have knowledge when making decisions that can impact your quality of life? Or are both equally important?
Or, is it more that we, as a society, have adopted more of a normalcy bias that gives us a false sense of security that may be driving a sense of complacency?
Wikipedia defines normalcy bias as follows:
The normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster and its possible effects. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations.
The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It can result in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
The opposite of normalcy bias would be overreaction, or “worst-case thinking” bias, in which small deviations from normality are dealt with as signaling an impending catastrophe.
The normalcy bias often results in unnecessary deaths in disaster situations.
While getting a small bruise on your arm after bumping it on the handlebar while riding wouldn’t be defined as a disaster, there are many injuries that occur on an ATV that would fall under this definition, for both the life/lives of those injured as well as the lives of those around her/him. This was certainly the case for me.
I am very familiar with the normalcy bias as I had this mindset prior to my injury, as I knew nothing about a brain injury, what risks were involved when riding an ATV or what safety precautions I should be taking.
While I’d heard about accidents happening, the message that ran through my mind was that it was something that happened to other people, not me.
In an instance your life can change and it could be for the better or for the worse. In the latter case, you likely won’t have a chance to hit the rewind button and have a redo. While there are many things in life we cannot control, there are many things we do have direct control over when it comes to our health and safety.
We are faced with making decisions each day and the implications of not making a “right” decision can often weight heavily on us in life.
Sometimes the consequences may be small:
You wish you had taken a taken a different route to get to the restaurant for lunch with a friend as you’re now finding yourself stuck in a large traffic jam and realizing you’ll need to reschedule the lunch to next week.
Other times though, the consequences may be much larger, ones that will forever stay with you:
You wish you hadn’t gotten behind the wheel after consuming alcohol that night as you’ve now lost the use of your legs and will forever be reliant on a wheelchair to get around.
The good news is you don’t have to wait until you’ve experienced a serious injury, like me, to realize you’d had the ability to make a different choice that likely would have prevented the situation from occurring. And how you choose to view your decision making process, whether it be a matter of having some common sense or that you have the sound knowledge, is irrelevant to me.
What I do care about is sharing my experience of having sustained a traumatic brain injury after not having taken preventative safety steps as an example as to just how much your life can change in a split second with an injury and that the consequences can last a lifetime.
Sadly, the brain injury club is still accepting life long memberships. My question to you is how badly do you want to be a member?
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