As the saying goes, "dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is." The news reports the unusual for the most part. And it has an effect on people's perceptions of the world. Road accidents cause a lot more deaths per year than airliner crashes, but every fatal airliner crash is big news and only the most extreme road accidents get more than very local news coverage, and a lot of fatal accidents get little or no local coverage.
If fatal road accidents were covered like airliner crashes, a lot of people would be afraid to go anywhere by car.
The road accidents that do get coverage are ones with something unusual about them. The fatal Uber accident a few months back got a lot of coverage because it was different. Same thing with serious Tesla accidents. A lot of exotic sportscar accidents get at least some coverage, as do any celebrity accident.