In making a decision on risk taking activities people usually have unrealistic expectations towards the outcome. In some way we feel that "risks beyond our control are more frightening than those we consider ourselves in charge of. So we drink and drive, and buckle the seat belt behind us, and light up another cigarette, on the strength of the illusion that to these risks at least we are invulnerable"
"Three patterns then emerge in our misestimates. First we prefer voluntary risks to involuntary ones. We feel we have some control over to those that we feel we don't. So we smoke cigarettes even thought it might kill us. While we fight and resent a company that used asbestos in a building. "Secondly we prefer familiar risks to strange ones. The homicide during a mugging, or the airliner hijacked in Athens, so loom much larger in our calculations than they should in terms of a real risk" Third, deaths that come in bunches are more frightening. "The jumbo jet crash