glumshoe:

spottedzebrasinpartyhats:

glumshoe:

Someone: “Is this thing safe?”

Me: “That’s a difficult question to answer, do you want to hear me explain for fifteen minutes why I think the word ‘safe’ is misleading and avoid using in almost every situation?”

Someone: “Absolutelt not.”

Me: “…it’s. Uh. There are certainly less safe things out there….”

Why is the word ‘safe’ misleading?

Few things, if any, are completely free of danger. I think most people understand that virtually everything cares a small amount of risk, but when they ask me if something “is safe”, it seems like they’re looking for a promise. Maybe they just want to be comforted. 

I can’t say “yes, it’s safe” because that’s… technically a lie. I think it’s more helpful to think of things as being on a scale of more to less dangerous, with various actions and situations pushing X activity further in one direction or the other. This came up a lot when I was a zipline/adventure course instructor. It’s always possible for something to go wrong, but by regularly inspecting equipment, wearing helmets, securing harnesses, making sure that facilitators are well-trained and following protocol, keeping an eye on the weather, and generally trying to limit unknowns, we simply make it less likely that something will go wrong and to mitigate the accidents that do happen.

That was my whole purpose for writing that “binding is not ‘safe’” post that became so notorious. Binding is certainly not the riskiest thing you can do to your body, but there’s no way to completely eliminate the possibility of harm. You can push it further and further away from “seriously dangerous” by taking sensible precautions like “limit the length of time you wear it” and “don’t use ace bandages” and “remove it before exercise”, but there are always going to be unknown variables that are unique to you, because you are an infinitely complex system. Even if you do everything “correctly” by all recommended standards, nothing is guaranteed – little things you’d never normally consider risk factors might spiral into huge problems over days, months, or years. Or, hell, they might not! I can’t hope to offer you an exact probability, but I can’t offer you a guarantee, either.

….Okay. Maybe that anon was right and I am cringy and pedantic. 

No, you’re exactly right. Pretty much any activity has some degree of risk. Heck, people die from going down the stairs wrong. I had an aunt break her hip because she fell while walking across a perfectly level floor. There are even risks (though rare ones) in sleeping. 

Just because something isn’t unsafe doesn’t mean it’s safe. 

The same idea applies to SCUBA diving. If you stay in shallower depths, don’t go anywhere with strong currents or anything sticking over your head, keep an eye on your dials, and making sure your equipment is in good shape, the chance of something going catastrophically wrong is pretty low. I can’t honestly call it safe, there are risks, but it’s nowhere near dangerous.