@dgardner posted this from the excellent www.OurWorldinData.org. It’s a great reminder how people give attention to some risks at the expense of others. We do this at a corporate level also, when we fail to address the those risks that cause the greatest loss of market value - strategic risks (https://bit.ly/1KeZgjF)
In terms of personal risk we are drawn, per Daniel Kahneman, to the ‘memorable’, so we worry more about Terrorism than Heart Disease, despite the fact that someone in the UK has about a one in four chance of being killed by heart disease, while their chance of being killed by a terrorist is about one in 11.4 million. This is slightly less than the chance of being hit by lightening (about 1 in 10 million) but still a lot more likely than winning the National Lottery (about 1 in 45 million).
In risk management, rather than the memorable, we seem drawn more to the readily quantifiable and classifiable (Market Risk, Credit Risk) or the more concrete (Operational Risk, Financial Reporting Risk).
It can often be difficult to put hard impact/likelihood numbers to the things that kill companies rather than people, but that doesn’t mean that the effort of working out what they might be isn’t worthwhile.