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Comment by bpt3 | Hacker News Reader

Automobiles (and their drivers) kill, maim, or injure significantly fewer people than intentionally aggressive individuals in major cities. For example, in 2017 there were 343 murders in Baltimore [0] (which I knew would be on the list before looking for one) vs. 38 fatalities due to car accidents [1].

Here's an example of a list: https://www.statista.com/statistics/217685/most-dangerous-ci...

These lists are based on crime rates, which to my point above, are driven by more immediate threats to life than indirect ones like the contribution of car exhaust to global warming.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/baltimore-homicide-murder-rate-...

[1] http://www.city-data.com/accidents/acc-Baltimore-Maryland.ht...

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That's highly misleading. Overall cars kill way more people than murderers (at least double) in America. Baltimore just happens to be at the top of the list for murders per capita and apparently slightly below average for auto fatalities. For most cities there is a greater chance of dying from a car crash than from being murdered.

OP did say "top 10 most dangerous cities in the US" and those studies usually don't count auto accidents.

It's not misleading for major cities that I'm aware of, and especially not so for the "most dangerous" ones that the parent brought up.

It doesn't "just happen" that I picked Baltimore, it's highly relevant to the topic the parent posted raised, even if you'd like to redirect the discussion elsewhere and it doesn't represent the US as a whole.

In addition to the effects of car pollution on health, education, etc., car infrastructure is also a big driver of segregation in cities, which leads to a lot of the social problems that engender violence. So shifting infrastructure away from cars is really relevant.

> So shifting infrastructure away from cars is really relevant.

Sorry, it's really not. No one murders another person because of policies that don't provide enough to support to public transportation.

A lot of freeways got built right in the middle of poor neighborhoods. I'm not saying there is a direct causal link with that and murders, but it's pretty hard to ignore the socio-economic effects of those massive infrastructure projects.

That's fair, but the person above seemed to be taking it to a logical extreme.

I think we generally underestimate the importance of social mixing in our society. Groups are less likely to see other groups as enemies if they're neighbors and take the same train to work every day. Poor people are less likely to feel excluded from society if they have friends from the middle class than if their whole neighborhood is on welfare.

Walkable neighborhoods with good infrastructure where a mixture of all strata of society live are, in my opinion, quite important if you want to prevent problems. Carcentric city planning is directly opposed to that.

Walkability isn't the issue in major cities, nor is proximity to other classes of people. In Baltimore (to stick with my original example), your likelihood of being a crime victim varies block to block, with one block being safe and the next being an open air drug market. That's not unusual for major cities in the US.

The flip side though it that your risk of being murdered is actually something you have a lot of control over. Cities with high murder rates typically have subgroups with extremely high rates of violence. So depending on your personal life and living situation automobiles could be the larger threat.

I think the point was that a street full of car traffic is much less liveable than a street full of cyclists and pedestrians.

Cars are still dangerous and noisy which leads to a stressful atmosphere. Many hide in their cars as if they were tanks, afraid of connecting with anyone outside.

What's needed instead is people coming together to form a community.

However during this pandemic, proximity has become a liability to the community.

I think the point is that the parent poster doesn't understand what metrics are used to determine these "most dangerous cities" lists.

Stress caused by car noise is way, way down the lists of issues in major cities.

The density is worse during a pandemic. That's why people are fleeing the cities.

Those are just the direct costs. Cars also make a lot of air pollution, which is the #1 killer worldwide. Enabling/enforcing sedentary life, noise pollution, crowding out streets are other indirect but large costs.

Edit: you could add in the costs of minimum parking requirements, which crowd out housing and increase housing prices.

Okay, but that's not what these types of lists take into consideration, partially because these are problems that are endemic in all cities.

By comparison, there were 650 murders in the entire United Kingdom of 67 million people.

Something different needs to be tried. I would suggest looking at the Violence Reduction Unit: http://www.svru.co.uk/

People driving instead of walking or bicycling will be in poorer health, so you'd have to account for that as well, plus the consequences of air pollution, stress from noise, etc.

I'm not sure it's right to generalize the danger of murder to have equal chance for everyone, in the same way that it is for the danger of the car

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