In a 1943 study about twice as many college students feared public speaking as feared having an automobile accident

Thirty years before an endlessly cited 1973 Bruskin survey (that often is quoted to compare fears of public speaking and death) there was a magazine article by Howard Gilkinson in Speech Monographs (volume 10, pages 74 to 83) titled A Questionnaire Study of the Causes of Social Fears Among College Speech Students. There were a total of 432 students in the Fundaments of Speech classes at the University of Minnesota (264 women and 168 men).

In Table II he reported on Intervariable Comparisons: results for two fears – Are afraid of speaking in public and Are afraid of having an automobile accident. As shown above in a bar chart, almost twice as many feared speaking (30.6%) as feared an auto accident (15.5%). He also separated them into fearful and confident speakers based on their response to the 104-item Personal Report on Confidence as a Speaker (PRCS).  

Mr. Gilkinson also asked students how they described themselves and reported percentages for six items. 39.5% described themselves as self-conscious, 19.5% as socially sensitive, 15.7% as observant, 14.1% as thorough, 13.9% as persistent, and just 7.2% as shy. The 7.2% describing themselves as shy is much lower than the 40% reported by Philip G. Zimbardo on page 14 of his 1977 book Shyness – what it is and what to do about it. The six items are shown above in another bar chart.

Mr. Gilkinson reported percentages for eight fear symptoms (reactions) as shown in still another bar chart: 49% for rapid heartbeat, 41% for both tense body and trembling, 25% for sweating, 23% for short breath, 18% for tense throat, and 14% for both dry mouth and tense face.

In Table II he also reported total frequencies for 14 physical fears and 18 social fears. Unfortunately he did not list results for each individual fear. Physical fears were: high places, storms, darkness. Burglars, getting lost, closed places, being poisoned, sharp edges, suffocating, electric shocks, catching contagious diseases, deep water, guns, and taking an anesthetic. Social fears were: committing some sin, dimple, complexion, being small, physical deficiencies, your sex, personal habits, bad effects of heredity, violating religious teachings, speech defects, acts of close relatives, language spoken in your house, clothing you had to wear, nicknames, your name, failures, and being criticized severely. 

An image of an auto accident came from the Library of Congress.