This strip from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is the best description of survival bias I’ve come across.
It’s a pernicious problem in day-to-day decision-making. Modern, sensationalist news reporting reinforces it. Frightening, surprising. “man bites dog” stories survive. Stories about everyday dangers end up in the bin.
When I was a child, my parents would tell me to go to school through fields and woodland so I was away from traffic as I dawdled around. Nowadays parents want their children in busy public areas when alone. Unless child attackers are now more numerous than careless drivers, this isn’t good advice.
