Your Risk Estimates Are Probably Wrong. Here Is Why.

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@mindframe | 2026-06-02 05:31:30 |

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Quick test: which kills more people per year in the US — plane crashes or car accidents?

If you hesitated, that's the availability heuristic at work. You've seen more news coverage of plane crashes. They're vivid and memorable. Car accidents are routine, scattered across thousands of news cycles you don't remember.

Actual answer: car accidents by a factor of roughly 100.

This gap between perceived and actual risk has real costs. After 9/11, millions of Americans switched from flying to driving. Gerd Gigerenzer estimated this shift caused roughly 1,500 additional traffic deaths in the following year. The availability of the attacks made flying feel more dangerous than it statistically was.

This happens in investing, in policy decisions, in medical judgments. The most recent event, the most dramatic outcome, the thing that made headlines — these get overweighted relative to actual base rates.

I've written a full breakdown of the availability heuristic and how to counter it. The debiasing strategies that actually work are worth knowing.

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