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Comment by namecheapTA | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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-...

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

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.)

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.

That's up to you. I've laid out the numbers; statistically speaking, public transit is safer on both axes of accidents and crime. Including adjacent areas of society makes no sense unless we do the same for alternate modes of transportation, at which point the trend continues.

It's not about pure safety numbers. It's about my control of the situation. Once I step onto a train, I'm locked in (literally).

In my car I have a lot of control. Heck, I don't get into drive through fast food lines in sketchy areas because I don't like the idea of not being able to go forwards or backwards if a criminal type walks up to my car.

I ride motorcycles. Very dangerous. But I feel safe because I ride with my eyes open. In 20 years, I've had maybe 1 close call. While most riders I know have a crash in their first year.

In other words: you feel safe. And that's fine; I'm glad you do. But I like feeling safe because the statistics bear it out.

And that's how you end up being an unlucky victim. "hope is not a strategy"

And on public transit, basically all you have is hope.

Hope, and numbers! A good combination, in my book.

Great writing and breakdowns in this back and forth. Numbers don’t lie.

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.

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.

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.

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