Another interesting point :

After 9/11, people became afraid of flying and started doing so less. Instead, they began driving more. Unfortunately, car travel has a much higher chance of death than air travel.

I have no doubt that there is a widespread and fundamentally irrational bias when it comes to people's fear of flying vs. driving. However, I'm not sure how much the above change was due to irrational fears, and how much due to the newly introduced inconveniences and indignities associated with air travel. Are there actually some reliable estimates about which cause was predominant? I'm sure at least some of the shift was due to entirely rational decisions motivated by these latter developments.