Most brainwashed nation there is, was, and hopefully ever will be.
This made me think of this story:
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/why-was-he-using-a-wheelchair-in-the-1st-place/1879349/
I have never in my entire life heard anyone in the US say public transportation is more dangerous than driving.
This is not a thing. We are all very aware that driving is incredibly dangerous.
It’s a very common thing. People are programmed to think it here. I heard someone mention a bus and 3 other people immediately piped up to agree they would never ride a bus because they would get stabbed/its far to dangerous. Fox news did it intentionally.
Must depend on where you are. I hear it constantly in the South and Midwest. They’re shocked and horrified when they learn about our coworkers who take the local light rail for their daily commute.
I’d kill for a local light rail. I’m so sick of driving.
I’ve never heard the transportation it’s self is dangerous but the people you will be forced into sharing a small inescapable space could be. Equating car accidents to being assaulted is comparing apples to oranges. No one is going to assault you or sexually assault you in your car, do drugs in your car without your consent, make your car smell horrible, piss in your car, etc. for your average driver, all those things are completely possible and more on public transit.
Agreed. Nobody thinks public transit is dangerous. If anything I would say upper class people like to say it’s for the poors. Generally everyone in my life has been jealous of other countries with better public transit.
i love my city-provided chauffeurs (bus drivers). they are more strict than any school bus driver i ever had 🤷 only time i’ve felt unsafe was when tanner the angry methhead got on, but cops were already babysitting him & he was redirected pretty quickly. cop & bus driver knew him by name so now i do too.
The “danger” comes from the same video of the same crackhead having a public meltdown, so now people believe there’s hundreds of crackheads on each public transport vehicle.
Statistical analyses indicate that motorists face roughly 500 times more crime than transit passengers when accounting for exposure (trips, miles, or hours). While the types of crime differ—transit riders are more susceptible to theft of personal items like wallets or phones, whereas drivers face higher risks of vehicle theft, vandalism, and road rage incidents—the overall risk of victimization is far lower on public transportation.
I wondered if the type of crime, in-person vs not, explains the perception.
I also wonder if there is a perceived danger when being around unknown people in an urban setting. People from the suburbs and rural areas may not be used to being around so many people.
I’d still rather someone flip me off from their car than have some guy grope me on the bus
Had a guy try to sell me crack on the tram one time. I had my child and her mom with me at the time.
Another dude I know got beat down and robbed on the tram.
I live in a city notorious for violence but it seems people forget that not every mode of public transportation is safer than having your own.
As a European, I absolutely love public transit. But I’m not gonna lie, I’d never even approach an American subway station. That shit looks, and to some degree functions, like medieval dungeons.
That shit looks, and to some degree functions, like medieval dungeons.
As criticism, this one kind of confuses me. I’ve taken public transit in the UK, Oslo in Norway and Istanbul in Turkey, and major transit hubs seem pretty similar in terms of design. Getting to the train platform from the airport to Oslo proper feels like taking the endless series of escalators to reach the Long Island Rail Road in Grand Central. The metro stations near where I was staying in Istanbul wouldn’t have looked terribly out of place in the Bronx or Brooklyn.
The major difference was that the stations and vehicles outside of the US were kept much cleaner, and people actually showed consideration for one another while using it. People would queue up in a more orderly fashion, let others disembark before trying to rush in, and there wasn’t anybody (aside from one kid in Oslo on the last tram for the night one day) blasting music or TikTok videos on their phones. Even on the occasions where I encountered homeless people in those systems, it was night and day between what you deal with in the US and what you see over there. That, and the systems were way more developed than what we have in the US. I don’t just mean in terms of destinations or the sheer reach of the transit systems, but that you’ll have cities with metros, trams, buses, light rail and inter-city high speed rail options all within (mostly, aside from the weirdness of the UK) a single system, giving you tons of options to get around.
In short, I’d be less worried about the apparently sinister design of the stations in an American subway system, and more concerned that you have to share that system with Americans.
No. Shit.
Public transit being more dangerous is not about the potential for crashes. It’s about the other people going with you.
Driving being more dangerous is also about the other people on the road with you.
Sure but if someone tells you your child is 70x more likely to die using one mode of transportation vs the other… One could call it child neglect to choose to put them at risk.
The 70x includes the other people on the bus.
The biggest risk on public transit is, of course, the cars.
I visited St Louis to attend a conference some years ago. I had a free morning so I decided to visit the botanic garden (don’t miss it if you go there!). So my European mind made me look at public transportation: underground to bus station, bus station to destination.
I have to say it was completely safe and I didn’t feel threatened at any time. But I noticed something:
I was the only white guy in the bus. In both trips.
I insist, there was no danger. The rest of people were minding their own business and were mostly people going to work or going home. Some of them gave me weird looks, not menacing, more like ‘who is doing this guy here?’.
So maybe the problem is something that ends in -cism.
It’s just that the American infrastructure is so far behind. The subway trains are so old, dirty and rundown. Not to mention graffiti everywhere. Much of the NYC Subway system, specifically track switches and signals, is still manually operated, as it still relies on the 100-year-old technology.
Most busses are still combustion engine instead of electric like most of the western world.
The US train infrastructure is an embarrassment. What China build in 20 years in high speed train is insane. The US or in this case California agreed in the same year 2008 to start om a high speed rail network. The 725 miles of track will maybe completed by 2033. In the meantime China build over 15000 km of high speed railway track. The comfort on the trains can’t even compare to air travel. Most Chinese prefer train over air.
The NYC subway system is impressive, in a way. Imagine a system that has been brutally underfunded for an entire century and basically frozen in time with barely any extension since then. Yet they still manage to keep it running and (mostly) functioning. It doesn’t surprise me that much of it relies on 100 year old technology. The money isn’t even enough for maintaining everything, let alone, massive improvements. And yes, it is an embarrassment. There are other subway networks in the world that have a similarly long history and don’t feel even remotely as neglected.
Comparing China might be a bit unfair with their wages and … efficient way of handling property, environmental and other laws but there is no need to. Just have a look at Spain for example. They started 34 years ago with their first line. It is also interesting because they built the HSR in a gauge that is incompatible with the rest of the national rail network.
You hit the nail on the head. Things get done in China. In my birth country, Netherlands, it is a drama with environmental concerns, paperwork, licenses, animals etc.
For example Netherlands introduced toll for trucks to move them to electric. But to install a charger at the trucking company, it will take upto 7 years!! That is totally insane. And since there is a change of government every 4 years or 2 years currently, everything changes again.
At least all the investment in infrastructure in China benefits its citizens. Unlike investing more in the military industrial complex.
Don’t you think having clean, reliable, innovative transport should be prioritized? How can you be proud of a 100 year old system that is crumbling and no notion of any investment. Maybe now NYC has a ‘socialist’ mayor, things will improve. But to catch up will take a long time.
Another part of this is the disruptive people are more visible on public transport. On a bus you can see two people arguing loudly and feel unsafe from it, whereas on the road those same two people could be arguing just as much and you’d never notice it in your bubble.
The people arguing in the car are more dangerous though because:
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One of them may be driving while operating a vehicle is not the biggest thing on their mind.
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You can’t see that they may be dangerous and move away from them because you don’t know what’s happening
It’s not only people arguing, assholes who drive dangerously aren’t too likely to kill you if you took the train for your commute, but in a car you’re always a few deciseconds away from death.
this is a great point, well articulated
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I like public transit, but I’ve never had a crazy person try to sit on me in my car either.
I’ve had a crazy person trying to prevent me from taking an exit.
hah, I’m reading this headline like “I’ve never accidently sat in a puddle of someone else’s piss in my car though so there’s that.”
lol this is the issue. It’s objectively not dangerous (or at least not more so than driving) but there are certainly some very uncomfortable situations that can happen. And I think a lot of people can’t really tell the difference between “this is an incredibly weird and uncomfortable social interaction” and “my life is in danger”.
If you’re female they could be both
The stats say otherwise.
you sat in a puddle of HIV infected semen.
you moved to another seat and sat down on a used syringe.
where’s the danger in that? /s
Absolutely true. My city had a very violent incident occur a couple years ago on the bus, and it is still brought up now as to why busses are unsafe. Meanwhile you can ask any of these people how many people died this week on the highways/driving and they have no idea. Busses feel unsafe because of personal perceptions, while driving feels safer because it’s what you’re used to. Feelings though are not facts.
Just like roller coasters. They seem dangerous because the 3-4 deaths a year are covered with a wild amount of attention.
I wish I could take a roller coaster to work.
That’s just a train isn’t it?
Yes, but more thrilling!
Try the M2 metro in Lausanne, it’s steep enough to basically be a roller coaster haha
People don’t like giving up control. But the fact of the matter is that giving up control of a vehicle to a professional who drives for a living is way safer than doing it yourself. (I have family who refuse to fly and I’ve had this conversation before.)
i love the control and freedom of having to spend all my attention on not killing anyone, making sure other drivers don’t kill me, paying tolls to use the fastest routes, being tracked everywhere I go, paying tons in taxes to maintain all these roads and subsidize fuel, and being forced to drive so every time i want to leave my home even if i don’t feel like it. /s
Yep have a family member like that. They think it’s safer. I’ve also seen them drive while using a cell phone and have argued with me that “its cool man I only had a couple in fine to drive”
Same with air travel. No matter how you slice the statistics air travel is so much safer than pretty much anything else. Only trains are close.
Yet an unsignificant percentage of people have a fear of flying, but almost no one has a fear of driving/passenger.
Different kinds of danger. It’s the same reason why a shark feels more threatening than your steering wheel or a bottle of beer; our brains are not good at recognising abstract threats. If you see a disorderly drunk guy one time on the train and felt threatened, your amygdala will remember that literally forever
nothing abstract about being cut off by an F150 or SUV crossing 3 lanes of traffic to take an exit at the last minute
that only tells me that most people haven’t evolved past primal instincts, and again is feelings. It feels dangerous, but it’s not.
There’s research done on our nervous systems and stress responses, and how they evolved in an environment that we’re so estranged from today that they’re basically irrelevant and maladaptive, but they haven’t caught up to modern lifestyles.
Basically we have the same stress/anxiety/fear responses that have been hardwired since we were hunter gatherers. Back then, threats were acute and immediate. You see a big cat with sharp teeth, you have a sympathetic nervous response where you feel an adrenaline kick, you run away or you face it with a spear. You either get away from or eliminate the threat, or you die. Either way, it’s over in like twenty minutes tops, and then the parasympathetic response kicks in. It purges all the stress hormones from your blood, replaces them with endorphins, and within ten minutes all your body’s systems equalize and reset to their calmer baselines. Respiratory rate, heartbeat, digestion and metabolism, etc.
Nowadays, the perceived threats we face each day aren’t like that. Deadlines, performance reports, layoffs, getting yelled at by your boss; being left by your partner for someone else; climate change, cost of living crisis, nuclear annihilation, random mass shooters, the list goes on. All these lingering threats that never quite go away and are always just hovering over us. Not quite enough to trigger a full fight-or-flight response. Just enough to let out a trickle of constant cortisol. And never really being resolved so that your parasympathetic response kicks in and replaces all those stress hormones with feel-good hormones.
A lot of modern self-care techniques are basically “body hacks” designed to use this notion. Grounding techniques to concentrate on something calm to move focus away from the stressors and activate the calming response. Focused breathing to tell your body it’s safe and slow your heart rate. Watch a horror movie to activate a full adrenaline response so that your body can recalibrate when it passes. Go for a run or an intense workout to release endorphins and flush out all that cortisol.
It all centers on “how do we shift away from the body’s stress response and activate the calming response?” And it’s only necessary because of how radically different the modern context is from the one where those systems developed originally.
When I see a drunk driver not able to hold a lane I feel threatened and I remember that literally forever… It must be down to mediacoverage, ads etc, because also while driving on the roads you see fucking dangerous shit all the time
