Fear of flying

Here’s an interesting article published in Psychological Science in 2004.

Basically, the results suggested that in the first few months following 9/11, because many more people in the States drove their cars longer distances, being fearful of flying, the increased number of deaths on the roads were actually greater than the number of people who died in the 9/11 planes.

There are some who disagree with their conclusion, saying that we don’t really know the reasons why people chose to drive instead of flying. Rose suggested that people may have opted for the car because they feared, not the flying, but the long security procedures at the airports!

But an interesting study, none the less, I thought.

Enjoyed this post? Why not sign up to receive Status-Q in your inbox?

2 Comments

Hey Q, the first link is broken, interesting read though!

Thanks, Tom – now fixed.

My brother also pointed out that they use a false zero on the Y axis, and that they haven’t really used enough historical data to show a convincing trend.

This doesn’t mean their conclusions are wrong, of course, but that they haven’t quite demonstrated enough proof. It would be interesting to see whether the hypothesis held up under further scrutiny…

Got Something To Say:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To create code blocks or other preformatted text, indent by four spaces:

    This will be displayed in a monospaced font. The first four 
    spaces will be stripped off, but all other whitespace
    will be preserved.
    
    Markdown is turned off in code blocks:
     [This is not a link](http://example.com)

To create not a block, but an inline code span, use backticks:

Here is some inline `code`.

For more help see http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

*

© Copyright Quentin Stafford-Fraser