Effectively – but that is mainly used in the context of regulation, when I was discussing increasing safety more generally (eg from improving technology and the associated choice of consumers to stick it in their cars).

The key point of the post isn’t really car safety at all – its just an example of thinking about “social situations” like an economist, something we all know about already 😉

Isn’t this just the Peltzman effect?

That is testable, we just need to find the person we’re discussing and run the Samuelson punk test (1955).

Tbf, it is only a small minority of cyclists that are poorly behaved – much like the cars methinks.

If we just allowed people to hit other people with baseball bats when they do something like this it would solve all the problems – I had no idea why the guy in my story was so angry at the cyclist.

As someone that attempts to run I’m not sure cyclists fully bear the cost of their random braking and swerving around when they are on the shared cycle/walk way on Thordon Quay/Hutt Road. Overtaking me, then arbitrarily braking to look in a shop really does piss me off 😉

Non-cyclists rarely seem sympathetic to that line of argument, though =/

That is a very good point – will find his introductory post and link to it.