Illnesses such as diabetes and cancer kill more than twice the number of Americans than murder or car accidents. However, Zale sees car accidents as more dangerous because he often hears about car accident fatalities on the nightly news, and he doesn't know anyone with diabetes or cancer. Therefore, Zale takes more precautions against car accidents. This exemplifies ________.

A) an algorithm
B) the availability heuristic
C) functional fixedness
D) the hindsight bias

Zale's perception is influenced by the availability heuristic, which is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. In this case, because car accidents are more frequently reported in the news and Zale is more personally familiar with them, he perceives them as being more common or dangerous than diseases like diabetes or cancer, despite statistical evidence to the contrary.