Airplane crashes National newspapers such as USA Today and t

Airplane crashes: National newspapers such as USA Today and the New York Times carry many more stories about deaths from airplane crashes than about deaths from auto crashes, even though the total number of deaths from auto crashes is much higher. Why do the news media give more attention to airplane crashes? What are the implications concerning probability?

Asbestos in schools: High exposures to asbestos are dangerous. Low exposures, such as that experienced by teachers and students in schools where asbestos is present in the insulation around pipes, are not very risky. Why do we take asbestos so much more seriously than driving and the probability of car accidents?  Give your own example of probability and risk.

Solution

Airplane crashed are spectacular and relatively rare: these are the ingredients for good ratings. The news is a money-maker for TV and they will pursue the stories that bring the best ratings. Those things that are more common become mundane and people have little interest in seeing them on TV. More-over terrorists are behind it & it is also that the number of lives as well as risk in stake are more in airplane crashes as compared to auto-crashes (considering a single incident). It is the fact that people will regulate what they can do without or what they can substitute. Cars have no alternative and we are not going to give them up. Asbestos could be replaced with fiberglass, so get rid of it. We also ignore what we cannot control. More people are struck by lightning that die of asbestos, but nobody wants to control that. Bathtubs are more dangerous than asbestos. Also more and more people are now suffering from mesothelioma, a kind of cancer caused by asbestos. To date, millions of people have already died from the disease. It seems as if the numbers just keep increasing each year.