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Comment by starbase | Hacker News Reader

Here's the relative risk of pedestrian death per vehicle mile, broken down by vehicle type.

(all ages)

  cars: 1  

  buses: 7.97    

  motorcycles: 1.93  

  light trucks: 1.45  

  heavy trucks: 0.96

(age 0-14)

  cars: 1  

  buses: 11.85  

  motorcycles: 3.77

(age 85 and older)

  cars: 1  

  buses: 16.7

source: https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/11/4/232

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That data is 20 years old. Maybe stats are the same or similar, but the makeup of vehicles on the road has certainly changed since 2002.

Despite being old data, what they call "light trucks" are the gigantic pickups and SUVs of today. "Heavy trucks" are almost all commercial vehicles.

The average truck/SUV driver has also changed.

It seems like it would be useful to show relative risk per passenger mile in addition to vehicle mile. I don’t think that’s in the study, and I can’t find average bus utilization.

For example, if cars and light trucks carry 1.5 passengers on average (made up number, but I’m sure it’s less than 2) and buses carry 20 passengers, then buses would be safer for pedestrians. Assuming you can “trade” light passnger vehicles for buses on a 1:1 passenger mile basis, which isn’t perfect, but it’s relevant.

Edit: this report [0] says buses average 9 passengers, cars average 1.58, and pickups average 1.46.

[0] https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/Pub...

Note that for an appropriate relative comparison between individual and mass transit, the appropriate measure is per passenger mile. (For a truly accurate comparison, you should also normalize driving regimes; cities, where buses generally operate, have a much higher rate of incidents per mile.)

For an absolute comparison, buses are responsible for 2% of pedestrian deaths, vs approx. 90% for cars (per the same FARS data).

Anyone care to wager that “We’re addressing this from a data-based perspective,” [words of the bill's sponsor], will not impose these proportionally higher fees upon buses?

If you look into pedestrian fatalities per mile travelled per pessanger, buses are most probably still far safer than any of the vehicles listed.

That statistic supports the obvious: hundreds of thousands of buses throughout the world constantly drive tortuous routes through extremely densely populated areas, and far fewer drive in places with more miles and few people.

It seems to me that an even more relevant metric (if there were a reasonable way to calculate it) would be deaths "per passenger mile" rather than "per vehicle mile".

You are skewing the data. The report itself says that. Buses only account for 2% of pedestrian casualties while cars and light trucks account for 90%.

So the term “hit by a bus” reflects reality

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