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Comment by sudont | Hacker News Reader

US Airline Fatalities in 2010: 0

US Motor Vehicle Deaths: ~32,000*

What are people more afraid of? Planes. Why? There's a few theories, but one is people are afraid of dying due to somebody else's mistake, the same with surgery: powerless. Even in a car accident, there's a bit of victim-blaming: the insurance company always says a person could have been more wary.

A cloud failure is much, much more rare, but more scary because we're not accountable. When it happens, we're "more helpless."

*Estimated from a drop from 2009. Can't find the actual number.

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> What are people more afraid of? Planes. Why?

Well, for me one reason is that I've watched countless hours of "Seconds from Disaster" and "Air Emergency" on the National Geographic Channel.

Seriously, though, I think the control thing is big for me. I'm pretty sure that if I was wealthy, I'd be a private pilot--and still would not like flying commercially.

I don't like buses all that much, or cars when I'm a passenger, so that's more evidence in support of the control theory.

I'm OK with reasonable sized boats (e.g., the ferries in Washington State).

Ambivalent about trains--I was OK with them until I took Amtrak from the Seattle area to Beaumont, Texas, and back (yeah, patent lawsuit), and saw just how poorly maintained the tracks are. Fortunately when my train derailed, we were only going about 5 miles an hour so no one was injured. It just caused a several hour delay.

Agreed. Also I believe our subconscience (or primal instincts) plays a role here.

Flying in a plane is more or less akin to walking in the dark. Our conscious mind sees it ordinary, but our animal half still is behind the times, and feels afraid.

I've always thought it had to do with control - in a car, you "have control" over your vehicle, whereas in a plane, you don't. Which is essentially the theory you're referencing.

If it was simply a control issue then that wouldn't that imply that people should be as scared to take the bus or the train as they are flying in a plane?

I don't doubt that there's a component of control involved, but I expect that the whole "we're flying in the sky and if anything goes wrong we're all dead" has a bigger part to play where fear is concerned.

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