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Fear of flying

April 26th, 2011

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.

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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…

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