Final answer:
The overestimation of plane crash fatalities compared to car crash fatalities can be attributed to the availability heuristic, which is a cognitive bias that bases frequency judgment on how easily examples come to mind.
Step-by-step explanation:
Believing that plane crashes kill more people annually than car crashes may occur because you are more likely to hear about every plane crash on the news, a bias known as the availability heuristic. This cognitive bias occurs because people tend to evaluate the frequency of an event by the ease with which examples of that event come to mind. Since plane crashes are high-impact events that receive a lot of media coverage, they are more easily remembered, and thus, people may overestimate their frequency in comparison to car crashes, which occur more frequently but are less likely to be reported in the media. The availability bias is a cognitive bias that occurs when people overestimate the importance of information readily available to them. In this case, people may believe that plane crashes kill more people annually than car crashes because plane crashes are more prominently featured in the news and are more available in people's minds.