Perhaps we should consider who has made the country so risk averse. It seems to me that it was our generation that caused it. We have mollycoddled our children due to the proliferation of multiple car ownership in households of all classes. It was our generation that introduced the levels of Health and Safety legislation etc. The generation before ours fought in world wars and the masses lived if housing conditions that we would no longer accept.
The nation got wealthier, motor car ownership grew, at the expense of motorcycles incidentally. Mothers decided that their offspring should not be expected to walk to school and thus was created the school run, which also was a means of showing growing wealth...oh look you have a Ford Cortina but I have got an Audi, so that makes me superior to you.

So am I right? I do not honestly know but the nation has become softer, lazier and has a far too high sense of entitlement.