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Originally Posted by Stonewall_Boris
Please elaborate, not about the planes though!
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Availability bias is the natural tendency we all have to overweigh examples that we can easily recall when a topic is introduced.
Because our memories more easily recall events which are
dramatic and/or
familiar, we overestimate the importance of such examples. In actuality, these types of examples might be very rare (part of the reason why they are so memorable)
Getting in a car is much more dangerous (statistically) than getting in a plane, yet most people feel the opposite way. The media, in turn, contributes to this by over-reporting (for months on end) the most dramatic examples.
Not to get too far off topic, but...
Driver-assistance and awareness technologies, and self-driving vehicles would probably save more lives (and injuries) than just about any other large-scale investment we could make.
See:
Driverless Cars on the Rise - CEA
Excerpt:
Quote:
Human error is overwhelmingly to blame for the vast majority of automobile accidents today according to statistics cited by autonomous vehicle experts, and the economic cost of these accidents has been rising.
For example, says Egil Juliussen, principal analyst for infotainment and ADAS at IHS Automotive in Chicago, more than 90 percent of traffic accidents are caused by human error, and in 2010, traffic accidents in the U.S. cost more than $300 billion, up from more than $230 billion in 2000. Moreover, Juliussen notes, this cost increase has occurred even as accident rates in the U.S. have been falling.
By contrast, self-driving cars are expected to save lives rather than put them at risk.
In October 2013, the Eno Center for Transportation, a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., released a research paper called Preparing a Nation for Autonomous Vehicles: Opportunities, Barriers and Policy Recommendations, which estimates 1,100 lives would be saved and there would be 211,000 fewer crashes per year if 10 percent of vehicles on U.S. roads (12.7 million) were autonomous. With 50 percent, or 63.7 million autonomous vehicles, the estimates jump to 9,600 lives saved and 1.88 million fewer crashes. With 90 percent, or 114.7 million autonomous vehicles, the Eno Center projects 21,700 lives saved and 4.22 million fewer crashes
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