It's merely thought provoking: every HN thread on transit will have the same half-dozen comments about violence and danger on public transit, when the reality is that two orders of magnitude more deaths occur each year on our highways.
Being confronted by a knife-wielding drug addict on public transit is just a scarier proposition all around even if the numbers suggest it shouldn't be. And it feels random where death in a car doesn't, even though for the victim it often is.
What is the throughput of highways vs public transit? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was two orders of magnitude greater person hours on roads in non public transit.
The highway mileage includes 306 billion passenger-miles on non-transit buses.
Amtrak (6 billion passenger miles) isn't considered transit.
Regardless of what the US does, throughput is much higher on public transit than it is on highways. You can fit so many more people on buses and trains than in automobiles.
For the actual numbers, compare deaths-per-passenger-mile in-city and deaths-per-passenger-mile between cities (highways vs buses, trains, etc), and you will see huge difference in fatality rate.
No but we do have a strong, though admittedly weakening, tradition of restricting the fun of others when the danger posed is not solely to themselves. For example building and setting off bombs is fun as hell but we're not allowed to do it because it's pretty unhealthy for the neighbors.
Driving cars is pretty dangerous not just for the driver but also for other people around who have not necessarily consented to being put in danger. When pedestrians and children are routinely getting killed (as they have been in my city this summer) we should shift the danger assessment a little away from the skydiving end of the spectrum and a little more to the backyard bombs zone.
However, many people haven't really consented to driving. They drive out of necessity. Where they live and work is only marginally in their control and there are no other transport options. When I was poor, I would have loved to not have to pay for insurance, gas, maintenance, and the vehicle itself. I couldn't really afford it. But without it, I couldn't get to work to eat. There weren't other options. When I made a little more money I could finally afford to live close to work and public transport was an option. The trip was 5 minutes by car, over an hour by bus.
I'm on board for heavily regulating driving and shifting that danger assessment as you suggest. But first I think there is a moral obligation to provide alternative modes of transportation. (This should not be interpreted as excusing drivers from their obligation to be skilled and safe.)
Both ends need to be addressed and it will make for a lot of changes in the middle too. But there's no solution that doesn't involve completely rewriting transportation.