The news about the Air India air disaster is traumatic. Here’s how to understand the risk

Local time on Thursday afternoon, Air India passenger aircraft to London It crashed shortly after the start from the north -western city of Indian Ahmedabad. Apparently, there were 242 people on board, including two pilots and ten cabin crew.

The most current reports indicate the number of fatalities exceeded 260including people on earth.

One passenger wonder – British National Vishwashkumar Ramesh He survived the disaster.

Fortunately, catastrophic aircraft accidents such as this are very occasional. But seeing a message about such a terrifying event is traumatic, especially for people who may be afraid of flying or traveling by plane soon.

If you feel restless after these disturbing messages, this is understandable. But here are a few things that are worth considering when you think about the risk of traveling by plane.

How hazardous does it fly?

One way to understand the risk, especially really diminutive, is to place them in context.

Although there are different ways to do this, we can first look at the numbers that tell us the risk of death in a plane crash at the passenger who gets on the plane. Arnold Barnett, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, calculated that in 2018–22 this number was the number one in 13.7 million. In every respect, this is an extremely low risk.

And there is a clear trend of air travel, which becomes safer every decade. Barnett’s calculations suggest that in 2007–2017 the risk was one in 7.9 million.

We can also compare the risk dying in the case of an aircraft with dying in a car accident. Although the estimates of fatalities of motor vehicles vary depending on how you perform calculations and where you are in the world, it has been estimated that flying More than 100 times safer than driving.

Evolution has distorted our risk perception

The risk of getting involved in an air disaster is extremely diminutive. But for various reasons, we often perceive it as bigger than it is.

First of all, there are well -known restrictions in how intuitively we estimate the risk. Our risk reactions (and many other things) are often shaped much more by emotions and instinct than logic.

As the psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in his book Thinking, quick and slowA significant part of our risk thinking is driven by intuitive, automatic processes, not cautious reasoning.

In particular, our brains have evolved to draw attention to the threats that are striking or unforgettable. The risk we stood with in primitive times was a vast, immediate and material threat to life. And vice versa, the risk we encounter in the up-to-date world is generally much smaller, less obvious and played in the long run.

The brain that served us well in prehistoric times remained the same, but the world has changed completely. That is why our brains are susceptible to mistakes in thinking and mental abbreviations called cognitive prejudices that distorted our perception of up-to-date risk.

This can lead us to overestimating very low risks, such as air accidents, while underestimating much more likely dangers, such as chronic diseases.

Why we overestimate the risk of flying

There are several factors that drive our risk misunderstanding when it comes to treatment.

Factual events, such as the Air India plane crash, are so occasional, they make them all the more mentally when they appear. And in today’s digital media landscape, the spread of dramatic material from the accident itself, along with images of consequences, strengthens its emotional and visual influence.

The influence of these live images on our thinking around the risk of flying is called Heuristic availability. The more unusual and dramatic the event is, the more it stands out in our minds, and the more it distorts our perception of its probability.

Another impact on the way we perceive the risk essential for flying is called the risk of terrifying, which is a psychological reaction we need Some types of threats. We are afraid of a certain risk that seems more catastrophic or unknown. This is the same reason why we can disproportionally fear of terrorist attacks, while in reality they are very occasional.

Airplane accidents usually include a vast number of deaths that occur simultaneously. And the thought of going down on the plane may seem more terrifying than death in other ways. All this falls into the emotions of fear, sensitivity and helplessness and leads to overweight risk.

Another factor that contributes to our overtaking the risk of flying is the lack of control while flying. When we are passengers on the plane, we are in many respects completely dependent on others. Although we know that pilots are highly trained and commercial aviation is very unthreatening, no control As passengers, he releases a deep sense of sensitivity.

This lack of control makes the situation more risky than in reality, and often more risky than actions in which the threat is much greater, but there is a (often false) sense of control, such as driving a car.

In a nutshell

We have evolutionary prejudice in the direction of stronger response to special threats, especially when these events are dramatic, they cause fear and when we feel a lack of control.

Although events such as Air India Crash influence us deeply, air travels are probably the safest method of transport. It is understandable that this may get lost in the emotional consequences of tragic air accidents.