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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 fatali

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?
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    The biggest difference is, atleast for me personally, I know how to make sure I don't die on the highway... I don't drink, I don't drive recklessly, I keep my car maintained, and I pay attention to my surroundings. So I feel my odds of not being a statistic are pretty good. I have almost no real way not to end up a BART statistic.
    - pandaman 4y ago
      When I lived in a worker's paradise with public transit for everyone, criminals camped outside subway stations as they provided a good and stable stream of prospective mugging victims. I wonder how many muggings happen to transit users compared to motorists in the US?
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        One in 20 violent crimes overall happen in either gas stations or convenience stores[1], so there would have to be a lot of public transport muggings to compensate for that! [1]: https://cspdailynews.com/company-news/c-stores-are-4th-most-common-location-violent-crime https://cspdailynews.com/company-news/c-stores-are-4th-most-...

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?
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  The biggest difference is, atleast for me personally, I know how to make sure I don't die on the highway... I don't drink, I don't drive recklessly, I keep my car maintained, and I pay attention to my surroundings. So I feel my odds of not being a statistic are pretty good. I have almost no real way not to end up a BART statistic.
  - pandaman 4y ago
    When I lived in a worker's paradise with public transit for everyone, criminals camped outside subway stations as they provided a good and stable stream of prospective mugging victims. I wonder how many muggings happen to transit users compared to motorists in the US?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      One in 20 violent crimes overall happen in either gas stations or convenience stores[1], so there would have to be a lot of public transport muggings to compensate for that! [1]: https://cspdailynews.com/company-news/c-stores-are-4th-most-common-location-violent-crime https://cspdailynews.com/company-news/c-stores-are-4th-most-...