Positive safety

Safety is normally understood as an ‘avoidance’ goal, the objective being to reduce risks and harms. Can it also be understood more positively, as an ‘approach’ goal? If so, what would that positive motivation entail, and what benefits might it bring? The world has never been safer, yet levels of stress and worry are increasing. Governments are spending heavily fighting crimes and hazards but in addition to that, we should focus on promoting aspects that make people feel safe. If the focus is on threats and crime, then the focus is on the absence of safety, not on the presence of feeling safe. And feeling unsafe is intrinsically bad even if that fear sometimes leads to sensible preventive action. Feeling safe, on the other hand, is intrinsically good. Sometimes it is instrumentally harmful to feel unrealistically safe. But, there is also some plausible evidence in support of the idea that we can make places safer by making people feel safer in them. We propose here a ‘Positive Safety Lens’ (PSL) as a complement to traditional ‘avoidance’ approaches to safety. We identify seven attributes of the PSL and discuss their potential benefits for safety research and safety promotion.