The Hockey Helmet Conundrum

In his latest financial column, the New Yorker's consistently brilliant James Surowiecki puzzles over a "curious fact" about American car consumers; namely, "that many people buying three-ton Suburbans for that arduous two-mile trip to the supermarket also want Congress to pass laws making it harder to buy Suburbans at all." He cites a recent survey which found that seventy percent of pickup owners strongly favor tougher fuel economy standards.

Sounds irrational, right? Not at all, argues Surowiecki, who is also the author of The Wisdom of Crowds. As a parallel example, he points to the case of the NHL and rules regarding helmets. It seems that most professional hockey players, given the choice, did not wear helmets, even though they secretly felt that the league should make helmets mandatory. Why is that?

Well, you should really read the whole article (it's all of one page), but suffice it to say that sometimes rules are the only thing that get us (the collective "us" I mean) to protect our thick skulls.