Maybe Plane Crashes Are Scary

In this same paper on political psychology, in describing the quirks of human judgment, they mention how vastly many more people die from heart disease than in plane crashes, and yet people will avoid flying because they're scared but don't change their American lifestyles. But I wonder, is this irrational? Death of heart disease takes a mighty long time, and to avoid it you have to radically alter the way you eat and your general habits. A plane crash snuffs out the rest of your life in an instant, and can be avoided by the fairly modest practice of just not flying. After all, no one flew until pretty recently, and you can get from anywhere on earth to anywhere else on earth, more or less, without going in airplanes. So yeah, "plane crash" would be a much less common response from the Machine of Death than "heart disease," but that doesn't necessarily mean it's irrational to try to avoid one and not the other.

(Full disclosure: I've never flown, and I've always been a little scared of it.)