8 ms·

The drunk guy about to T-bone you is more difficult to encounter in the first place than the drunk guy about to stab you on the subway. I agree these are civic

The drunk guy about to T-bone you is more difficult to encounter in the first place than the drunk guy about to stab you on the subway. I agree these are civic issues, not issues with public transportation. However I always get the impression that many ardent public transit advocates are the ones who are also resistant to cleaning up public transit so that it is more attractive. Yes, let's definitely work towards providing mental health solutions, but let's also not let the psycho claim an entire subway car because "he has every right to be there" or "it's inhumane to forcibly remove him" and still expect the general public to delight in giving up their cars and take the subway instead.

woodruffw 4y ago
> The drunk guy about to T-bone you is more difficult to encounter in the first place than the drunk guy about to stab you on the subway. Statistically, he isn't. If drunks stabbed people on subways at the rate that drunks killed people with their cars, around 46 people would be stabbed on the US's subways each day. And that's killed with cars, not "permanently disabled or disfigured"; that rate is even higher. The problem with the "psycho" example is that it just isn't that common. It's chiefly a perception, a statistically misaligned one, that's been ruthlessly propagated to support economic structures that benefit from as many Americans driving as much as possible. That isn't to say that it doesn't happen, but to use the drunk driving example again: we tolerate orders of magnitude more antisocial behavior on our roads than we do in our public transit systems.
- pandaman 4y ago
  Could you explain your statistics a bit? The first link I've found[1] shows 50,930 fatalities in 2019 with estimated 19% involving drunk drivers. So 9676 fatalities per year. Let's assume drunk drivers always kill somebody and survive themselves i.e. no drunk driver ever died in a single car accident. This makes 27 fatalities caused by drunk drivers every day. Did you mean that approximately twice as many people ride subway than drive in the US? I could not find numbers on subway ridership but considering only few cities have a subway at all it's very hard to believe but I am open to the data. 1. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/drunk-driving-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/drunk-driving-s...
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    I got 47 deaths per day from the roughly 17,000 fatalities that are directly attributed to drunk driving each year[1]. Even if we arbitrarily halve that to account for at-fault deaths at drivers' own hands, that leaves ~23 people dying, each day, because of drunks on our roads. In contrast, around 300 people died in total on public transportation in 2020[2]. In 2019, 34 million people commuted daily by public transportation[3]. By contrast, around 76% of American commuters drive to work[4]. Assuming that "commutes to work" is the same as "employed," that means 76% of 158 million[5], or around 120 million driving commuters. In other words: 4 times as many people commute by car than by public transport, but at least 20 times as many die each day just via the canonical example of unsafety on public transport. And the actual ratio is likely far higher, since the best number I could find for public transport fatalities (under 1/day) is not filtered by accident, suicide, crime, natural causes, &c. Thus the claim: the things that people claim to fear about public transport are far more real as dangers when commuting by car. [1]: https://troopers.ny.gov/impaired-driving https://troopers.ny.gov/impaired-driving [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1295843/number-fatalities-public-transit-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1295843/number-fatalitie... [3]: https://www.apta.com/news-publications/public-transportation-facts/ https://www.apta.com/news-publications/public-transportation... [4]: https://www.statista.com/chart/18208/means-of-transportation-used-by-us-commuters/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18208/means-of-transportation... [5]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
    - pandaman 4y ago
      NY troopers contradict NHSTA (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving) by a lot. I wonder how do they gather their statistics? But your math does not make sense even with the data you have: you said if the drunks were killing in subway at the same rate as they do on the road then 47 people were killed in subway every day yet you took the 47 number from much larger pool of drivers. Should not it be a quarter of that, 12 people? Your 300 fatalities in public transit could be interpreted as the fatalities caused by the public transit, are you sure they count people stabbed and/or shot waiting for a bus? The page does not show the source and what counts as the death in public transit (it requires some kind of payment for that). If somebody is stabbed while waiting for a bus, does it count?
- decafninja 4y ago
  Unfortunately, you're not going to convince people by laying out statistics, otherwise you'd (you as in transit advocates, not you specifically) would have succeeded already. What you need to do is address how people feel, and transit advocates have been doing a poor job at that in the US. People feel safe in their cars. People feel unsafe on transit. I don't know why this perception deviates from reality, but it does. Maybe it's because in a car you have tons of steel surrounding you from the drunk driver, while in transit you have at best your clothes protecting you from the psycho. Address this, and you will win over many people to transit. But again - I feel like most transit advocates are highly resistant to doing what needs to be done. I have nothing against well run transit. I love taking the subways in Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other cities where subways are ultraclean and nearly devoid of potentially dangerous individuals. I hate taking the NYC subways because almost every other day I encounter someone I feel wary being in the same car or station with. You're simply not going to win over hearts and minds by stating the homeless guy in the subway car raving about some lunacy is completely harmless and you should just ignore him and let him be. Even if he is actually harmless beyond just stinking up the air and causing a nuisance.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    > I love taking the subways in Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other cities where subways are ultraclean and nearly devoid of potentially dangerous individuals. Most Asian cities have horrendous track records on dealing with mentally ill and homeless, that's why. They're frequently driven out, dumped into homeless ghettos, incarcerated, or dumped into the countryside. Western society has higher expectations of their marginalized, for better or for worse. This is why US planners look to Europe for models to emulate instead of Asia. > Address this, and you will win over many people to transit. But again - I feel like most transit advocates are highly resistant to doing what needs to be done. Most advantages surrounding driving cars in the US are based around culture and perception. The mythos of the car in the US is huge and many parts of car culture is based around the mythos. Transit advocates by nature of not buying into the mythos are going to be types that are hard to sway through feelings and perception. I agree that transit has a perception problem that needs to be fixed in US big cities. The reason why this disconnect exists is because transit fans are by nature more driven by data and less driven by mythos or narrative. That doesn't mean this isn't a problem.

woodruffw 4y ago

> The drunk guy about to T-bone you is more difficult to encounter in the first place than the drunk guy about to stab you on the subway. Statistically, he isn't. If drunks stabbed people on subways at the rate that drunks killed people with their cars, around 46 people would be stabbed on the US's subways each day. And that's killed with cars, not "permanently disabled or disfigured"; that rate is even higher. The problem with the "psycho" example is that it just isn't that common. It's chiefly a perception, a statistically misaligned one, that's been ruthlessly propagated to support economic structures that benefit from as many Americans driving as much as possible. That isn't to say that it doesn't happen, but to use the drunk driving example again: we tolerate orders of magnitude more antisocial behavior on our roads than we do in our public transit systems.

pandaman 4y ago
Could you explain your statistics a bit? The first link I've found[1] shows 50,930 fatalities in 2019 with estimated 19% involving drunk drivers. So 9676 fatalities per year. Let's assume drunk drivers always kill somebody and survive themselves i.e. no drunk driver ever died in a single car accident. This makes 27 fatalities caused by drunk drivers every day. Did you mean that approximately twice as many people ride subway than drive in the US? I could not find numbers on subway ridership but considering only few cities have a subway at all it's very hard to believe but I am open to the data. 1. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/drunk-driving-statistics/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/drunk-driving-s...
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I got 47 deaths per day from the roughly 17,000 fatalities that are directly attributed to drunk driving each year[1]. Even if we arbitrarily halve that to account for at-fault deaths at drivers' own hands, that leaves ~23 people dying, each day, because of drunks on our roads. In contrast, around 300 people died in total on public transportation in 2020[2]. In 2019, 34 million people commuted daily by public transportation[3]. By contrast, around 76% of American commuters drive to work[4]. Assuming that "commutes to work" is the same as "employed," that means 76% of 158 million[5], or around 120 million driving commuters. In other words: 4 times as many people commute by car than by public transport, but at least 20 times as many die each day just via the canonical example of unsafety on public transport. And the actual ratio is likely far higher, since the best number I could find for public transport fatalities (under 1/day) is not filtered by accident, suicide, crime, natural causes, &c. Thus the claim: the things that people claim to fear about public transport are far more real as dangers when commuting by car. [1]: https://troopers.ny.gov/impaired-driving https://troopers.ny.gov/impaired-driving [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1295843/number-fatalities-public-transit-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1295843/number-fatalitie... [3]: https://www.apta.com/news-publications/public-transportation-facts/ https://www.apta.com/news-publications/public-transportation... [4]: https://www.statista.com/chart/18208/means-of-transportation-used-by-us-commuters/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18208/means-of-transportation... [5]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t01.htm
  - pandaman 4y ago
    NY troopers contradict NHSTA (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving) by a lot. I wonder how do they gather their statistics? But your math does not make sense even with the data you have: you said if the drunks were killing in subway at the same rate as they do on the road then 47 people were killed in subway every day yet you took the 47 number from much larger pool of drivers. Should not it be a quarter of that, 12 people? Your 300 fatalities in public transit could be interpreted as the fatalities caused by the public transit, are you sure they count people stabbed and/or shot waiting for a bus? The page does not show the source and what counts as the death in public transit (it requires some kind of payment for that). If somebody is stabbed while waiting for a bus, does it count?
decafninja 4y ago
Unfortunately, you're not going to convince people by laying out statistics, otherwise you'd (you as in transit advocates, not you specifically) would have succeeded already. What you need to do is address how people feel, and transit advocates have been doing a poor job at that in the US. People feel safe in their cars. People feel unsafe on transit. I don't know why this perception deviates from reality, but it does. Maybe it's because in a car you have tons of steel surrounding you from the drunk driver, while in transit you have at best your clothes protecting you from the psycho. Address this, and you will win over many people to transit. But again - I feel like most transit advocates are highly resistant to doing what needs to be done. I have nothing against well run transit. I love taking the subways in Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other cities where subways are ultraclean and nearly devoid of potentially dangerous individuals. I hate taking the NYC subways because almost every other day I encounter someone I feel wary being in the same car or station with. You're simply not going to win over hearts and minds by stating the homeless guy in the subway car raving about some lunacy is completely harmless and you should just ignore him and let him be. Even if he is actually harmless beyond just stinking up the air and causing a nuisance.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  > I love taking the subways in Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and other cities where subways are ultraclean and nearly devoid of potentially dangerous individuals. Most Asian cities have horrendous track records on dealing with mentally ill and homeless, that's why. They're frequently driven out, dumped into homeless ghettos, incarcerated, or dumped into the countryside. Western society has higher expectations of their marginalized, for better or for worse. This is why US planners look to Europe for models to emulate instead of Asia. > Address this, and you will win over many people to transit. But again - I feel like most transit advocates are highly resistant to doing what needs to be done. Most advantages surrounding driving cars in the US are based around culture and perception. The mythos of the car in the US is huge and many parts of car culture is based around the mythos. Transit advocates by nature of not buying into the mythos are going to be types that are hard to sway through feelings and perception. I agree that transit has a perception problem that needs to be fixed in US big cities. The reason why this disconnect exists is because transit fans are by nature more driven by data and less driven by mythos or narrative. That doesn't mean this isn't a problem.