It's a human psycological glitch which many of us have.
Precisely.
Having chatted it through with my microlighting pal, that is the human factors thought I left him with:don't ask yourself why he did this, ask yourself why you won't one day do something similar. And if your answer is, I'm not that dumb...you're kidding yourself.
Read enough accident reports and hopefully, hopefully just as you are about to do something you shouldn't be doing, somewhere deep in the grey matter a warning bell will sound and you'll wave it off. Probably accompanied with a big dose of "WTF was I thinking".