Real or exaggerated risks?

How do you determine whether taking a risk is warranted? With so many influences to skew our perception, it can be difficult to decide what action is justified. Your emotions influence your point of view.  Your mind has an opinion.  Your friends and family will offer their two cents. People you don't know may even offer you advice.  Then, the media and your imagination will paint pictures as well. Whom do you believe? How do you decipher or measure the true risk?

In November 2006, Time Magazine published an article that explained  "our emotions overtake our reasoning [and] we worry about sensational events which are statistically unlikely to harm us — such as airline disasters, shark attacks, or terrorism — rather than everyday dangers that kill thousands." Our emotions guide us to decide whether we should take or cancel that annual trip, get into a car and drive on a busy highway, or risk taking a new nuclear reactor job when life-threatening dangers appear to be a real possibility. 

John Graham, who spent four years as administrator of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, says "People's capacity to visualize a risk is an important part of the attention they give to it. "  Consider the fear factor that causes many people to worry about the level of terorist threat.  What does a scale of 5 colors about the intensity of terrorist threats mean to the general public? Red is supposedly more serious on the scale than yellow or orange but what do such colors measure or control other than human anxiety? Its up to each of us to decide.