But the napalm scare is just one of many examples where we fail to accurately assess the risks of our actions and of those around us. We worry about getting killed in an airline crash, which on average kills 200 people a year. We largely ignore riding in cars, which kill more than 40,000. Well, the odds of dying from that are less than 1 in 1 million. True odds seldom presented A lot of our misconceptions about the true odds are wrapped up in our culture.
Women are more concerned about breast cancer than any other health threat.
Yet heart disease kills 10 times as many women each year. One reason we don't know the true odds is because of the ways they are often stated. Like the American Cancer Society, which says one woman in nine will get breast cancer. Which is true only if you assume all women will live to be 85. The cancer society states it their way to encourage women to get mammograms.