Fear hitches a free ride on freeways

With all the news about freeway shootings, it might seem like the safest thing to do is stay home in bed. But your chances of dying there are even higher.

According to the National Safety Council, 500 Americans perish each year from accidental strangulation or suffocation in bed. Contrast that with the four tragic gunfire deaths so far this year on area freeways.

Other unexpected minefields include turning on faucets (super-hot tap water kills 40 people a year), navigating staircases (1,600 deaths from falls) and walking out the front door (encounters with bees, reptiles, poisonous plants and even venomous caterpillars account for 90 fatalities annually).

So, why don’t these threats cause as much anxiety as freeway shootings?

Fear is a complex beast -- and several factors influence why perceptions of danger are often out of sync with the actual mathematical risk, says David Ropeik of Harvard University’s Center for Risk Analysis.

It’s a pattern that also arose with West Nile virus, mad cow disease, the Washington, D.C., sniper, anthrax and Sept. 11, among others.

Experts say anxiety about such threats is fueled by a combination of human instinct and media hype.

“Things that kill us in ways over which we have no control seem scarier,” Ropeik says. For example, riding in the passenger seat of a car feels more frightening than sitting behind the wheel, he says.

Uncertainty compounds the sense of danger. The apparent randomness of recent freeway shootings pushes emotional buttons, he says: “When we don’t know the who, what, when, where or why of a risk, we protect ourselves with caution, fear and worry.”

Ironically, that caution can sometimes put people in more peril. For instance, a few L.A. drivers have started traveling only on surface streets since the freeway shootings. Statistically, that increases their chances of dying because fatal car wrecks (and shootings) are more common on side streets.

A similar reaction happened after Sept. 11, Ropeik says. Terrorism fears prompted some people to switch from flying to driving. The result? From October to December 2001, the number of car-accident deaths nationwide climbed by more than 1,000 over the same period a year earlier, according to a University of Michigan study cited by Ropeik.

Not surprisingly, media coverage plays a key role in whipping up public fear, he says: “Awareness of a risk magnifies the fear of it.”

And, of course, seeing scenes of death and the grief of survivors increases the emotional impact of such incidents.

Sociologist Barry Glassner of USC, author of “The Culture of Fear,” says TV newscasters could help keep things in perspective by spelling out how rare such deaths are.

But Ropeik isn’t sure that would help. When it comes to fear, emotions often trump statistics, he says. “It doesn’t matter if the risk is low. If there’s a shark attack off the coast and you put it in the newspaper, people will be more concerned than they should be.... Instinctively, we all tend to be more afraid of some things than we need to be, and less afraid of other things than we should be.”

One solution, he says, is to “challenge yourself to be more analytical and use the facts to balance your natural fears.”

Another help is to “take media reports with a grain of salt.” Journalists are only human, so they tend to “play up the dramatic aspects of stories [because] they want their work to get attention,” says Ropeik, a former TV news anchor.

Glassner sounds a similar theme: “People need to realize we go through these cycles with one fear after another.”

The typical pattern is an initial media feeding frenzy, followed by stories analyzing whether everyone is overreacting, Ropeik says.

Eventually, the dread fades. “When a new threat first appears, it’s more frightening than after we’ve lived with it for a while,” he says.

That explains why people tend to fret over the latest exotic peril to life and limb while ignoring statistically more common killers, such as car accidents and obesity-related heart disease.

“Anything that is around us all the time, we take for granted,” Glassner says. To some extent, that’s healthy. Constantly dwelling on dangers to life would prevent people from functioning day to day, he explains.

Some people use humor to defuse anxiety and cope with tragedy. In the 1991 comedy “L.A. Story,” Steve Martin and a granny start shooting it out after a radio DJ announces the first day of spring, signaling “open season” on local freeways.

More recently, Jay Leno has been telling freeway shooting jokes all week on NBC’s “Tonight Show.”

And the blog lavoice.org offered a few lighthearted tips for dealing with the latest season of roadway gunfire:

* “Worry about it the way you’re worrying about West Nile virus. (Oh, you forgot about that one? Mosquito season’s in full swing, but are you running about emptying standing pools of water from around your home? No, you’re probably ignoring it, like I am.)”

* “Ignore the whole thing. You’re one of 4 million people in this city. What are the odds?”

*

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What are the chances?

Freeway shootings are hogging the media spotlight, but other routine activities are more likely to be lethal. Listed below are the numbers of annual deaths from various causes, along with the chances of being killed that way during a one-year period in relation to population. Figures are nationwide from 2002 unless otherwise noted.

-- Roy Rivenburg

Traffic accident in California: 4,225 deaths (in 2003). Chances: 1 in 8,700.

Accidental poisoning: 17,550 deaths; 1 in 16,400.

Falling from furniture: 785 deaths; 1 in 367,000.

Swimming pool drowning: 636 deaths; 1 in 450,000.

Accidental strangulation or suffocation in bed: 509 deaths; 1 in 566,000.

Gunfire on Southern California freeway: 12 deaths (at current pace); 1 in 1.25 million.

Rat or other non-canine animal bite: 75 deaths; 1 in 3.8 million.

Lightning strike: 66 deaths; 1 in 4.4 million.

Contact with overly hot tap water: 40 deaths; 1 in 7 million.

Paper cut, nail or tin-can puncture or other foreign object entering through skin, eye or other orifice: 23 deaths; 1 in 12.5 million.

Source: National Safety Council, California Highway Patrol.