By Phil La Duke

On Friday, I left Toronto to drive back to Detroit in a blizzard that at least one weatherman described as “the storm of the century”.  As I headed out from the Toronto office to my car, several colleagues told me to “be careful” or to “be safe”.  While the sentiments were sincere and the intentions well meaning and heartfelt, I wondered how useful this advice really was.

I want to be clear, I value the sentiments that people express when they say be careful, but it really doesn’t change my behavior.  I had a lot of time to think during my five-hour sojourn home—my policy is no cellphone use in the car, but it didn’t matter since my service wasn’t working since I was out of my home country.  It occurred to me that better advice would probably have been “is it worth the risk?”

This…