Originally Posted by
Tankertrashnav
It is interesting that no matter how low the statistics go there is still a widespread fear of flying among the general public and a belief that it is inherently dangerous and that accidents are much more common than they actually are. To an extent the same can be said of rail travel (in the UK, at least) where numbers of passenger fatalities in recent years have been vanishingly low. I presume that the false perception is reinforced by the fact that rare aviation and rail crashes are given widespread press and TV coverage because of the very fact that their rarity makes them newsworthy.
Conversely the really dangerous form of travel, ie the private car, is regarded as safe by most people. I suppose it may have something to do with familiarity and the erroneous belief that as the drivers themselves are in control they must be safer.
It has a lot do with that. It's a well known and proven concept in the field of risk perception that the degree of control that people perceive they have over risk alters their perception of risk. It is most clear when comparing voluntary and involuntary risk. When people choose to do a risky activity they usually perceive the risk as lower than when they have a risk enforced upon them. For example people who smoke may perceive the risk of a new power transmission line built near their home as the greater cancer risk.
Studies show most people rank their perception of a range of risks very differently to the statistical ranking of those risks. Humans are not very good at assessing risk. That's one reason for safety systems. Humans are prone to taking short cuts and underestimating the risk of taking the short cut. Many aircraft incidents have occurred because pilots perceive the risk of going around or diverting as greater than landing in unsafe conditions (for example).
The other key elements in fear of flying are that the experience of being 35,000 feet in the air is totally unnatural, that combines with the thought that you may experience falling to your death for an extended period of time. Add that to the experience that you are strapped into a seat not in control of anything and you get fear of flying.
In these cases statistics mean nothing, it is an emotional response.