I've always been fascinated by how that works. Hindenberg pretty much killed the Zeppelin industry, yet airliners crash all the time and no-one's afraid to fly. The Titanic didn't herald the end of sea travel either. What's the difference?
With respect to airplanes, I think it is again a proven volume/historical problem. Zeppelins (and blimps) have very low maximum speeds and limited capacity. As for airplane accidents, I don't think they are very frequent so much as it is just that they are generally so heavily broadcast (for good reason).
Watching the Hindenburg burn is just frightening. I think airplane crashes are far less scary because they are so fast. Financial disasters don't really seem to prevent the next bubble, but video of Chernobyl burning and an abandoned city have real impact.
not to mention that balloon vs metal is already very unbalanced