I also think most people assume a plane crash will always be a deadly event whereas a car crash is a minor inconvenience that is sometimes fatal.

I mean, yes, you have significantly more control over a vehicle you're operating on the ground in spaces that are designed for those vehicles than you do as a passenger on a vehicle that is in the air. Remember when it was a common factoid in these spaces to point out that humans actually avoid collisions a significant amount of the time, to the point that even a 95% avoidance rate of driverless tech would be insufficient to match them?

I don't know if I'd call all of that an "illusion," when you do literally have more control, it is easier to have control, and we know humans are actually exceptionally good at controlling those vehicles despite the number of collisions. I get what you're trying to say, like, we attribute car collisions more to individual responsibility and action that what it might merit given the variables, but I think that's a different discussion from why we get a bit more upset about machines we have basically no control over potentially killing us along with a hundred other people at a time.

Also because cars are a "mundane everyday fact-of-life". its like saying "5,000 people choke to death every year"; no ones gonna stop eating or start chewing better after hearing that.

Its easy to assume "that guy sucks at driving/chewing so they crashed/choked" instead of "maybe we should have more driving tests and license less people"