I'm not afraid I'll get stabbed but I'm not a fan of some dude staring daggers at my wife and I while he laughs and talks to himself. When I've traveled alone I've seen fights, peeing, groping and all sorts of stuff. Nobody I saw ever got killed but I can't say I miss public transit.
hollerith · 3h ago
I bet they count only deaths and injuries, but not PTSD cases acquired.
giraffe_lady · 2h ago
Interestingly enough I used to do volunteer facilitation of groups for adults with newly acquired ptsd (ie not caused by child abuse which is otherwise I think the #1). In nearly every group the slight majority were there because of car crashes, the other approximately half of the participants being all other causes.
So I don't have the stats and maybe you weren't being serious anyway but I think cars are a huge source of actual for real ptsd that people have to deal with.
The entire crux of the article hinges around one graph at the end, where they compare traffic annual deaths per 100k people with subway annual deaths per 100k people .. per person who rode the subway 500 times?
Why is there some 500 ride part thrown in? Why is it not just simply comparing "X people in NYC / Y people die yearly on subway" with ""X people in NYC / Y people die yearly in traffic"?
They also don't link to their sources for subway crime. They do link to a MTA document, but that document only shows subway crime rates for 6 months out of the year, not the whole year.
Also the comparison they do make at the end is apples to oranges; the issue isn't purely about death rate, but there's the other categories of series crime on the subway, like assault/rape/etc., that aren't really factored into the final claim. They moved the goalposts and deftly switched from a discussion about "safety" to a discussion about "deaths".
zamadatix · 5h ago
Regarding the comparison likely because the data source only gave homicides per ride and didn't come with the corresponding information to convert that into homicides per person year of use. The choice of 500 is a bit of an arbitrary example of what the latter might look like (~2x per workday).
What they really want to compare is per equivalent trip in the city (same mileage, same path, same time) but that's a bit impossible to do directly. Showing the number for going to work and back every day for a year is 1/10th that of traffic deaths in NYC as a whole gets the same idea across despite the lack of precise data anyways.
woodpanel · 6h ago
> other categories
Exactly. By the time my co drivers start staring me down, turning up their boombox, or worse their cellphones, leaving graffiti, food waste, vomit, used needles, and feces in my car, this apples-to-oranges comparison will make sense.
g42gregory · 5h ago
It's the cost of Democracy, they say.
more_corn · 6h ago
Nobody ever stabbed me in my car.
tehwebguy · 6h ago
Nobody ever stabbed you on the subway either lmao
vel0city · 4h ago
You don't have to be stabbed for a fellow driver to kill you. They just have to look at their phone or have too many drinks at the bar or not realize how much their new meds are affecting them or underestimate how tired they are.
anothereng · 4h ago
public transport will not be safer in general than private transport unless you have a special circumtance
sagarm · 3h ago
About 40,000 people die in motor vehicle crashes every year.[1]
How many die on public transit? We tend to hear about it when it happens.
I'm not afraid I'll get stabbed but I'm not a fan of some dude staring daggers at my wife and I while he laughs and talks to himself. When I've traveled alone I've seen fights, peeing, groping and all sorts of stuff. Nobody I saw ever got killed but I can't say I miss public transit.
So I don't have the stats and maybe you weren't being serious anyway but I think cars are a huge source of actual for real ptsd that people have to deal with.
Why is there some 500 ride part thrown in? Why is it not just simply comparing "X people in NYC / Y people die yearly on subway" with ""X people in NYC / Y people die yearly in traffic"?
They also don't link to their sources for subway crime. They do link to a MTA document, but that document only shows subway crime rates for 6 months out of the year, not the whole year.
Also the comparison they do make at the end is apples to oranges; the issue isn't purely about death rate, but there's the other categories of series crime on the subway, like assault/rape/etc., that aren't really factored into the final claim. They moved the goalposts and deftly switched from a discussion about "safety" to a discussion about "deaths".
What they really want to compare is per equivalent trip in the city (same mileage, same path, same time) but that's a bit impossible to do directly. Showing the number for going to work and back every day for a year is 1/10th that of traffic deaths in NYC as a whole gets the same idea across despite the lack of precise data anyways.
Exactly. By the time my co drivers start staring me down, turning up their boombox, or worse their cellphones, leaving graffiti, food waste, vomit, used needles, and feces in my car, this apples-to-oranges comparison will make sense.
How many die on public transit? We tend to hear about it when it happens.
[1] https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS/SafetyProblem
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