[pandaman]

NY troopers contradict NHSTA (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?

[woodruffw]

I have no idea how they gather their statistics, that’s just the first source I found! Let’s use NHTSA instead and assume their numbers are better; even so, over an order of magnitude more people die from drunk drivers than do whatsoever on a daily basis on public transport, even after you adjust for ridership.

> Should not it be a quarter of that, 12 people?

I adjusted the 300 public transit deaths up by a factor of 4, which is the same as adjusting the 17,000 or 12,000 drunk driving deaths down by a factor of 4.

> 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?

Why should it? Drunk driving statistics don’t count the number of deaths that happen when people are arbitrarily murdered at gas stations or convenience stores, even when the perpetrator happens to be drunk. They also don’t include other forms of influenced driving, road rage, or anything else that would further bring the number up.

Unless you have a specific reason to believe that there’s a silent epidemic of bus station shootings, this reads as special pleading.

It’s surprisingly difficult to find breakdowns by cause for deaths on public transit. But here’s one: from 1990 to 2003, there were 668 deaths in the subway system. The majority were suicides, the largest minority were accidents, and 1.5% were homicides[1]. In other words, even during a 13 year period when NYC (a city that’s routinely characterized as dangerous) was much more dangerous than it is currently, less than one person was murdered per year in a transit system that carries millions of commuters daily.

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23639439_Epidemiolo...

[pandaman]

>I adjusted the 300 public transit deaths up by a factor of 4, which is the same as adjusting the 17,000 or 12,000 drunk driving deaths down by a factor of 4.

You adjusted 300 fatalities per year by a factor of 4 that you got from the number of transit commuters and the number of the motorists and got 47 people per day? I am still not following.

>Why should it?

Because you don't need to wait for bus when you drive?

>Unless you have a specific reason to believe that there’s a silent epidemic of bus station shootings, this reads as special pleading.

I don't believe it's silent. I have reasons to believe a lot of people get assaulted on the bus stations and in subway stations.

> and 1.5% were homicides[1]

10 people killed in NYC subway over 13 years? I find this number a bit on the lower side TBQH. Perhaps they count "pushed under the train in such a way it could not have been written off as suicide or negligence on the victim's part"?

[woodruffw]

> You adjusted 300 fatalities per year by a factor of 4 that you got from the number of transit commuters and the number of the motorists and got 47 people per day? I am still not following.

47 people per day is just the ratio from the NY troopers' site's statistics. If we use the NHTSA instead, it's 32. If you then adjust that downwards by 4, you get 8, which is an order of magnitude higher than the daily deaths on public transit by all causes.

> Because you don't need to wait for bus when you drive?

Sure. Instead you wait at gas stations, rest stations, wander through underground parking lots, and so forth. This is not a compelling justification for introducing a category error to the comparison, and I suspect that it isn't one that will ultimately favor your position (given that 5% of all violent crime happens in the first two categories).

> I don't believe it's silent. I have reasons to believe a lot of people get assaulted on the bus stations and in subway stations.

Sources that substantiate this would be fantastic. Absent those, it's an unsubstantiated feeling.

> Perhaps they count "pushed under the train in such a way it could not have been written off as suicide or negligence on the victim's part"?

The NYPD does not miss an opportunity to characterize events as homicides or other violent crimes. Again: unless you have a sourced reason to believe that the NYPD lied about homicide numbers in the subway system between 1990 and 2003, this is baseless.

[namecheapTA]

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]

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]

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-...

[namecheapTA]

Once again this is a bit misleading. Sure there are crimes at gas stations. I don't stop at those sketchy looking inner city gas stations. Also, most crimes are against the employees of the stations. And finally, there are a lot of crimes at gas stations, but there are probably 50+ million people visiting the stations daily. Per interaction, they're pretty safe especially if you stick to safe looking ones.

It falls back to exactly what I said. I know how not to get killed on the roads, and I know how not to get attacked at a gas stations.

But when I get on a locked train, there's almost nothing I can do to avoid being a victim at that point beyond fighting harder than my attacker.

[woodruffw]

And so you see, it's only the dangerous gas stations where the danger is. Ho hum!

"Inner city gas stations" are where people are, because they're in cities, where the people are. Nobody is claiming that they aren't safe on a per interaction basis: the observation is that, if we're including arbitrary areas around all public transportation, then we ought to be doing the same for automobiles.

> It falls back to exactly what I said. I know how not to get killed on the roads, and I know how not to get attacked at a gas stations.

No: you think you know how not to get killed. You might be a great driver, but the drunk guy next to you doesn't care. The guy who runs through a light because it's worked every other time for the last 20 years on his commute doesn't care. The guy who's checking his text messages in the car behind you doesn't care. The sheer number of deaths on America's roads do not substantiate the claim that you can excel your way into safety.

If you look elsewhere in this discussion, you'll see that fewer than 300 people die in total each year on US public transport. That's all modes of death, not just crime or negligence. Nobody likes being locked on a train with someone in a mental health crisis, but the statistics simply do not bear out a disproportionate risk to your life or safety.

[namecheapTA]

As a motorcycle rider, I actually do take care to not have either of your examples happen to me, even when Im in a car.

Beyond that, there is nothing you can say to me to get me to take BART to save $2. Even if Bart was free, I still wouldn't take it.

[pandaman]

Great thing is that you are free to not visit gas station's convenience store, can you use transit without visiting stations?

[woodruffw]

This is not a sensible response: it’s not a matter of whether you can avoid visiting the convenience store, because millions of people do. There’s a clear demand for it, and accompanying crime.

(Besides, in most bus networks you actually can use the buses without using the stations — most allow riders to be dropped off anywhere along the route. But that’s entirely besides the point, as you haven’t presented a lick of evidence that statistically significant crime is happening in public transit stations.)

[pandaman]

I can see how it can be confusing: you argue that transit is safe insisting that any crime happening around the transit use is irrelevant. You get mugged walking out of the station because that's where criminals expect solid foot traffic? Not transit fault, even though there is no way to avoid this situation while using transit. On the other hand, convenience stores on gas stations, where most crime is happening against clerks, are making driving dangerous for everyone even though you don't need to visit these stores while driving. I suspect you are emotionally invested in propagating the idea of transit safety and there is no point in further argument, which I only entered out of curiosity about your math.