London Life is full of risks. Getting out of the bath and opening champagne bottles should be done with care. For those with bad backs a sneeze or a forward lean can be dangerous.
Medical treatments can have awful side effects.
Our preoccupation with risk is something of a paradox as we now live healthier and longer lives than ever before. This apparent paradox might merely reflect that our anxieties about risk have remained constant, but we now have the leisure and good health to worry about risks other than such fundamental dangers as infantile mortality, infectious diseases and starvation. If this is true it shows at once how personal and variable perceptions and worries about risks can be, and how unreliable. I, for example, am a cyclist and a motorist. I fasten my seatbelt when I drive and wear a helmet on my bike to reduce the risk of injury.