6 ms·

Public transit is much safer than driving in your car. Someone skipping fare does not compare to even a light fender bender.

dr_dshiv 3y ago
Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like public transit is safe. That’s important. Public transit in other countries feels nice. In the US, you feel poor. Design, maybe, matters?
denimnerd42 3y ago
I think people mean a more irrational feeling of safety, rather than hard statistics. They don't want to see or be near those antisocial behaviors when they're taking transportation. Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger.
- gottorf 3y ago
  "Irrational" is a strange way to describe it. People don't go around memorizing statistics of how likely someone who is exhibiting one kind of antisocial behavior (being obviously high, defecating in public, etc.) would be to engage in another kind of antisocial behavior (committing physical violence upon another person). And especially when the cost of making the wrong judgment is high, it's entirely rational to want to avoid it entirely. > Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger. Old people generally have more to lose. Young people, especially young males, are well known to think of themselves as invincible.
  - dkarl 3y ago
    > People don't go around memorizing statistics of how likely someone who is exhibiting one kind of antisocial behavior (being obviously high, defecating in public, etc.) would be to engage in another kind of antisocial behavior (committing physical violence upon another person) So you're saying people don't do a rational analysis of the risks... but calling it "irrational" is strange? Lots of human behavior is irrational. It doesn't have to be unusual to call it irrational. Overestimating the risks of one choice and therefore not getting the benefits of it, and incurring the higher risks of alternatives instead (for the elderly, being socially isolated at home or driving with impaired abilities) is the kind of irrationality that people would benefit from correcting, through education and changing social assumptions.
    - gottorf 3y ago
      > So you're saying people don't do a rational analysis of the risks... but calling it "irrational" is strange? GP's wording implied that rational people take public transit because they've done the risk-benefit analysis, and irrational people don't. I'm not sure if there's actual evidence behind such a risk-benefit analysis. > people would benefit from correcting, through education and changing social assumptions. If the goal is to attract more people to use public transit, it would be vastly more effective to police the occurrence of antisocial behavior on it, instead of telling people that it's actually OK, the chance of stepping on a puddle of piss or being shouted at incoherently or being pushed onto an oncoming train is much lower than they think, and is lower than the chance of being injured in a car crash while driving to work. Whether or not that is true (and I wouldn't mind seeing some cold, hard data on it), most people will prefer to roll the dice with their car. In other words: if you're a social architect keen on implementing your vision of a flourishing public transit system, it would be irrational not to account for people's loss aversion, whether or not that loss aversion itself is irrational.
      - dkarl 3y ago
        How many places have public transit systems used by older people, and how many have accomplished this by policing the antisocial behavior away? It seems like it is at least as easy to get older people to use public transit where they might see people with mental illness and addiction than it is to keep mental illness and addiction off of public transit. In countries that value civil liberties it is probably easier. As you observed, fear is driven by perceptions and rare incidents of violence covered in the media, not by statistics, and you can't pull somebody out of a bus or a subway car because they contribute to somebody's fear. You can arrest and remove a person who shits on the floor or threatens somebody, but for every one person like that, there are twenty people who are obviously in bad shape, obviously suffering, and look like they might do something alarming at any moment. You can't arrest and remove those people. You can get people to ride public transit despite the odds of seeing people like that.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        People also (rightly or not) feel they can influence the outcome when driving much more than they can on transit (note this doesn't really apply to planes because planes are mass transit that so obviously beat driving after a certain distance). And they might be right, something like 30% of traffic fatalities involve alcohol, so you can avoid driving after drinking and avoid times when others are drink driving, and improve your odds.
- wuliwong 3y ago
  >I think people mean a more irrational feeling of safety, rather than hard statistics Also, the generic statistics of the probability of getting in an accident might not accurately apply to me. I might be a particularly good or bad driver. Totally anecdotal, but of my 28 years of driving, both of my small accidents occurred in the first two years. >They don't want to see or be near those antisocial behaviors when they're taking transportation I guess I think wanting to avoid seeing antisocial behavior is rational. It almost seems like that is the exact response expected in order to define the behavior as antisocial in the first place. :') >Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger. Older people are also more vulnerable. What might come across to me as just annoying or gross could be cause for more legitimate caution to a more vulnerable person. In my mind, when someone is acting particularly antisocially in public, there does seem to be a rise in my expectation (although slightly) that this person could do something violent.
blairbeckwith 3y ago
I think when most people use "safe" in this context, they mean "comfortable" or "psychologically comfortable". Nobody enjoys sitting beside someone tweaking and shitting themselves, even if it's perfectly safe.
- rg111 3y ago
  Exactly. I don't ever mind public transport. I have used public transport in multiple areas of the planet. There are two quips: 1. You have to be there in someone else's time. You can't have 5 or 10 or 30 minutes if something comes up. 2. What you say. I don't want to rub my body with people who are wearing dirty clothes, smell, and has god-knows-what liquid on their clothes who might choose to cough without using their hands. (This has happened to me) So, I avoid public transport where there is this kind of intermingling. Fine with me where there are upper classes or similar in transport and it is enforced strictly.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    Do you avoid elevators?
    - hparadiz 3y ago
      Maybe not explicitly when traveling but when picking a place to live, sure.
    - anshorei 3y ago
      Elevators tend to be restricted to a specific group of people (inhabitants, customers, employees, etc.) in a way that public transport is not. If an elevator smells like urine, has suspicious stains or trash, chances are I'd look for an alternative. But it just so happens that the elevators I come across tend to be clean, unlike the public transport. And I say this as someone who still takes public transport a lot, but it's increasingly less comfortable.
    - HEmanZ 3y ago
      This isn’t a fair comparison, and you have to be arguing in bad faith to say this. I have never seen someone pull out a gun, tweak out and rip out the hair of the girl sitting in front of them, or shit themselves, on an elevator. I have seen all of these on public transport in Seattle. From another city, my younger brother was on the L in Chicago when a gun went off. Someone shot into the ceiling, no one got hurt, but holy hell idk if I could ride after that. I still like the light rail in Seattle and am a massive supporter of public transport, but I understand people who won’t take it because of the psychological threats.
hifromLA 3y ago
Psychological safety matters just as much as physical safety. If you think that you won’t see some shit on public transit I welcome you to come to LA and take the red line for a day.
- brandall10 3y ago
  Having spent 6 months in NYC over the past year, you see shit on the subway lines all of the time, but normal people use it all the time. I think the latter is the important thing. It's not normalized as a viable means of transport in the land of the automobile.
  - amrocha 3y ago
    Buddy if you want to convince people to use public transit, saying a little shit is normal is not the way to do it btw I live in Tokyo and moved here explicitly because of public transit.
    - brandall10 3y ago
      That wasn’t the message - it’s the presence of having normal people. Public transport is just as popular in NYC as it is in Tokyo despite the shit. Just got back from 3.5 months in Europe (17 cities), and yes it’s vastly better there, far more clean and sane. Still, coming back to NYC I’m not not taking the subway despite spending nearly my whole life in SoCal. It’s easily the better option over owning a car if you’re in Manhattan/Brooklyn.
      - amrocha 3y ago
        I see where you're coming from, but the "normal people" leave because of these incidents. If you want everyday people riding the train, you gotta make sure that the poorest people in society aren't so miserable that they're unpleasant to be around.
        brandall10 3y ago
nomel 3y ago
> Someone skipping fare This, obviously, isn't what raises fear in people. "Safer" for some statistics, like a car crash, but also much less safe for things like getting stabbed, spit on, confronted. Sure, it's somewhat rare on public transport, but they're exactly zero in my car, at freeway speeds. edit: A quick google search shows two stabbings, one slit throat, and a page full of fights, in my area, over the last two years. While the statistics are low, in terms of per person*miles, this real difference, and the 2hr vs 30 minute times, is what keeps people and families in cars. Fundamental changes are needed.
- lapetitejort 3y ago
  I may never get stabbed in my car, but I will get brake-checked, cut off, buzzed, rammed, and shot at [0]. Driving is stressful and I dread every getting on the highway. [0]: https://everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings-are-on-the-rise/ https://everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings...
  - cscurmudgeon 3y ago
    You can still get shot on a train.
  - Wojtkie 3y ago
    Everytown is definitely a biased source to use
- rapind 3y ago
  What's funny is over-policing public transit would probably take only a fraction of the resources that private transportation does.
- dkarl 3y ago
  > two stabbings, one slit throat, and a page full of fights, in my area, over the last two years That's basically nothing next to car accidents. Car accident injuries can be pretty gruesome. Maybe the fundamental change that is needed is awareness of the risks of driving and the yearly death/mutilation toll in each community. (And the awareness that bigger and bigger SUVs with higher and higher bumpers is a zero-sum game.)
cscurmudgeon 3y ago
That’s a dishonest comparison. Skipping fare not same as a drug addled person hassling commuters.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  [flagged]
stevenicr 3y ago
I think it's important with discussions like these to include the city or area, and time period. I can say for sure that the subway in DC was better and safer than cars for the most part, when I was there many moons ago - However if you look at the people who are riding the bus in my current city, or at the times when I was in Vegas.. and I've heard the NY subway at night is nothing like the DC subway.. These discussions can have all people right and all people wrong when they are discussing how they view their apples to others oranges.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like public transit is safe. That’s important. Public transit in other countries feels nice. In the US, you feel poor. Design, maybe, matters?

denimnerd42 3y ago

I think people mean a more irrational feeling of safety, rather than hard statistics. They don't want to see or be near those antisocial behaviors when they're taking transportation. Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger.

gottorf 3y ago
"Irrational" is a strange way to describe it. People don't go around memorizing statistics of how likely someone who is exhibiting one kind of antisocial behavior (being obviously high, defecating in public, etc.) would be to engage in another kind of antisocial behavior (committing physical violence upon another person). And especially when the cost of making the wrong judgment is high, it's entirely rational to want to avoid it entirely. > Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger. Old people generally have more to lose. Young people, especially young males, are well known to think of themselves as invincible.
- dkarl 3y ago
  > People don't go around memorizing statistics of how likely someone who is exhibiting one kind of antisocial behavior (being obviously high, defecating in public, etc.) would be to engage in another kind of antisocial behavior (committing physical violence upon another person) So you're saying people don't do a rational analysis of the risks... but calling it "irrational" is strange? Lots of human behavior is irrational. It doesn't have to be unusual to call it irrational. Overestimating the risks of one choice and therefore not getting the benefits of it, and incurring the higher risks of alternatives instead (for the elderly, being socially isolated at home or driving with impaired abilities) is the kind of irrationality that people would benefit from correcting, through education and changing social assumptions.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > So you're saying people don't do a rational analysis of the risks... but calling it "irrational" is strange? GP's wording implied that rational people take public transit because they've done the risk-benefit analysis, and irrational people don't. I'm not sure if there's actual evidence behind such a risk-benefit analysis. > people would benefit from correcting, through education and changing social assumptions. If the goal is to attract more people to use public transit, it would be vastly more effective to police the occurrence of antisocial behavior on it, instead of telling people that it's actually OK, the chance of stepping on a puddle of piss or being shouted at incoherently or being pushed onto an oncoming train is much lower than they think, and is lower than the chance of being injured in a car crash while driving to work. Whether or not that is true (and I wouldn't mind seeing some cold, hard data on it), most people will prefer to roll the dice with their car. In other words: if you're a social architect keen on implementing your vision of a flourishing public transit system, it would be irrational not to account for people's loss aversion, whether or not that loss aversion itself is irrational.
    - dkarl 3y ago
      How many places have public transit systems used by older people, and how many have accomplished this by policing the antisocial behavior away? It seems like it is at least as easy to get older people to use public transit where they might see people with mental illness and addiction than it is to keep mental illness and addiction off of public transit. In countries that value civil liberties it is probably easier. As you observed, fear is driven by perceptions and rare incidents of violence covered in the media, not by statistics, and you can't pull somebody out of a bus or a subway car because they contribute to somebody's fear. You can arrest and remove a person who shits on the floor or threatens somebody, but for every one person like that, there are twenty people who are obviously in bad shape, obviously suffering, and look like they might do something alarming at any moment. You can't arrest and remove those people. You can get people to ride public transit despite the odds of seeing people like that.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      People also (rightly or not) feel they can influence the outcome when driving much more than they can on transit (note this doesn't really apply to planes because planes are mass transit that so obviously beat driving after a certain distance). And they might be right, something like 30% of traffic fatalities involve alcohol, so you can avoid driving after drinking and avoid times when others are drink driving, and improve your odds.
wuliwong 3y ago
>I think people mean a more irrational feeling of safety, rather than hard statistics Also, the generic statistics of the probability of getting in an accident might not accurately apply to me. I might be a particularly good or bad driver. Totally anecdotal, but of my 28 years of driving, both of my small accidents occurred in the first two years. >They don't want to see or be near those antisocial behaviors when they're taking transportation I guess I think wanting to avoid seeing antisocial behavior is rational. It almost seems like that is the exact response expected in order to define the behavior as antisocial in the first place. :') >Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger. Older people are also more vulnerable. What might come across to me as just annoying or gross could be cause for more legitimate caution to a more vulnerable person. In my mind, when someone is acting particularly antisocially in public, there does seem to be a rise in my expectation (although slightly) that this person could do something violent.

blairbeckwith 3y ago

I think when most people use "safe" in this context, they mean "comfortable" or "psychologically comfortable". Nobody enjoys sitting beside someone tweaking and shitting themselves, even if it's perfectly safe.

rg111 3y ago
Exactly. I don't ever mind public transport. I have used public transport in multiple areas of the planet. There are two quips: 1. You have to be there in someone else's time. You can't have 5 or 10 or 30 minutes if something comes up. 2. What you say. I don't want to rub my body with people who are wearing dirty clothes, smell, and has god-knows-what liquid on their clothes who might choose to cough without using their hands. (This has happened to me) So, I avoid public transport where there is this kind of intermingling. Fine with me where there are upper classes or similar in transport and it is enforced strictly.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Do you avoid elevators?
  - hparadiz 3y ago
    Maybe not explicitly when traveling but when picking a place to live, sure.
  - anshorei 3y ago
    Elevators tend to be restricted to a specific group of people (inhabitants, customers, employees, etc.) in a way that public transport is not. If an elevator smells like urine, has suspicious stains or trash, chances are I'd look for an alternative. But it just so happens that the elevators I come across tend to be clean, unlike the public transport. And I say this as someone who still takes public transport a lot, but it's increasingly less comfortable.
  - HEmanZ 3y ago
    This isn’t a fair comparison, and you have to be arguing in bad faith to say this. I have never seen someone pull out a gun, tweak out and rip out the hair of the girl sitting in front of them, or shit themselves, on an elevator. I have seen all of these on public transport in Seattle. From another city, my younger brother was on the L in Chicago when a gun went off. Someone shot into the ceiling, no one got hurt, but holy hell idk if I could ride after that. I still like the light rail in Seattle and am a massive supporter of public transport, but I understand people who won’t take it because of the psychological threats.

hifromLA 3y ago

Psychological safety matters just as much as physical safety. If you think that you won’t see some shit on public transit I welcome you to come to LA and take the red line for a day.

brandall10 3y ago
Having spent 6 months in NYC over the past year, you see shit on the subway lines all of the time, but normal people use it all the time. I think the latter is the important thing. It's not normalized as a viable means of transport in the land of the automobile.
- amrocha 3y ago
  Buddy if you want to convince people to use public transit, saying a little shit is normal is not the way to do it btw I live in Tokyo and moved here explicitly because of public transit.
  - brandall10 3y ago
    That wasn’t the message - it’s the presence of having normal people. Public transport is just as popular in NYC as it is in Tokyo despite the shit. Just got back from 3.5 months in Europe (17 cities), and yes it’s vastly better there, far more clean and sane. Still, coming back to NYC I’m not not taking the subway despite spending nearly my whole life in SoCal. It’s easily the better option over owning a car if you’re in Manhattan/Brooklyn.
    - amrocha 3y ago
      I see where you're coming from, but the "normal people" leave because of these incidents. If you want everyday people riding the train, you gotta make sure that the poorest people in society aren't so miserable that they're unpleasant to be around.
      - brandall10 3y ago

nomel 3y ago

> Someone skipping fare This, obviously, isn't what raises fear in people. "Safer" for some statistics, like a car crash, but also much less safe for things like getting stabbed, spit on, confronted. Sure, it's somewhat rare on public transport, but they're exactly zero in my car, at freeway speeds. edit: A quick google search shows two stabbings, one slit throat, and a page full of fights, in my area, over the last two years. While the statistics are low, in terms of per person*miles, this real difference, and the 2hr vs 30 minute times, is what keeps people and families in cars. Fundamental changes are needed.

lapetitejort 3y ago
I may never get stabbed in my car, but I will get brake-checked, cut off, buzzed, rammed, and shot at [0]. Driving is stressful and I dread every getting on the highway. [0]: https://everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings-are-on-the-rise/ https://everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings...
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  You can still get shot on a train.
- Wojtkie 3y ago
  Everytown is definitely a biased source to use
rapind 3y ago
What's funny is over-policing public transit would probably take only a fraction of the resources that private transportation does.
dkarl 3y ago
> two stabbings, one slit throat, and a page full of fights, in my area, over the last two years That's basically nothing next to car accidents. Car accident injuries can be pretty gruesome. Maybe the fundamental change that is needed is awareness of the risks of driving and the yearly death/mutilation toll in each community. (And the awareness that bigger and bigger SUVs with higher and higher bumpers is a zero-sum game.)

cscurmudgeon 3y ago

That’s a dishonest comparison. Skipping fare not same as a drug addled person hassling commuters.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
[flagged]

stevenicr 3y ago

I think it's important with discussions like these to include the city or area, and time period. I can say for sure that the subway in DC was better and safer than cars for the most part, when I was there many moons ago - However if you look at the people who are riding the bus in my current city, or at the times when I was in Vegas.. and I've heard the NY subway at night is nothing like the DC subway.. These discussions can have all people right and all people wrong when they are discussing how they view their apples to others oranges.