In progressive image transmission, there exist some risks which may appear during the processing. A first class of risks is the diminishing coding performance when the occurrence of insignificant coefficients at each transmission time is a small-probability event. It may be a catastrophic transmission risk which can lead to major and irreversible bit losses. In a second class of risks, the performance of the transmission technique diminishes though the occurrence of insignificant sample is still a large-probability event. This paper shows a ''Test of Transmission Risks'' which can be used to analyze, for a given image, the performance of the state of the art in progressive transmission from the viewpoint of the catastrophic transmission risks. To this aim we make use of a decision making tool based on axioms requiring sensitivity to coding situations where the occurrence of insignificant sample at the transmission time may be either a small-probability or a large-probability event.