Preparedness Every year in the United States, more than 30,000 people die in traffic accidents. Only about 10 people a year die from snake bites. Yet many people are highly fearful of snakes (Öhman & Mineka, 2001) and few are fearful of cars. Why? Snake fears are biologically prepared because snakes have been a threat across the course of human evolution. Cars, of course, did not exist during the course of evolution, so people are not biologically predisposed to fear them.