You ever wonder how we often rationalize the most dangerous things which we prefer or can't avoid?

For some things we take an approach of risk versus reward. The risk of driving is moderate chance of an accident vs not driving which means you might not be able to work or earn a living. Planes are another good example. Planes have a high safety record so the likelihood of failure is low, but failure is catastrophic. Compared to driving the same distance which has a higher risk of failure, but the average result of failure isn't as significant. Which risk do you take? Driving is far more likely to have an accident, but your chances of survival of the accident is greater. Convenience is also a factor. If I'm going from Los Angeles to San Francisco it's an hour flight plus an hour and a half at the airport vs 6-8 hour drive. Bearing in mind that the longer you're on the road the greater your risk increases, but your risk on the plane doesn't increase very much with distance.

I think I get where you're coming from. I just finished a behavioral economic class where this type of behavior was discussed. Fascinating class really. Without going into the "whys" these heuristics (fancy word huh?) exist, suffice it to say it is very human of us.

SGT (Join to see) This video will explain it pretty well. Found from another thread here on RP and digging into some of the links from that article. Also the website has some awesome videos on it as well. Basically it is because we are wired to only process the information relevant to the situation. Aside from that humans have big egos. How many times do we watch a sporting event and think (or say) "How could you (insert mistake here)!? I would have made that play" based on having played that sport when we were in college, high school, or at an even younger age. We completely ignore that these individuals are professionals, part of a minute portion of the population good enough to compete at that level? I will admit that I have done it on more than one occasion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Il_D3Xt9W0
http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html