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Comment by jfim | Hacker News Reader

Part of the reason is that public transit for whatever reason appears to be unusually sketchy in many places in the US. For example, a few years ago, there was an incident with a man with two chainsaws threatening passengers [1] in the local transit system.

In contrast, the transit systems I've seen in Europe and Asia appear well maintained, clean, and relatively safe.

Biking is also safer in European cities that have proper bike infrastructure.

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/man-armed-chainsaw-threatens-bart-r...

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It’s funny how the one time it has ever happened that someone wielded a chainsaw on the subway it’s memorable news, and becomes evidence of a narrative that all of public transit is ‘sketchy’. That article’s from 7 years ago, and nobody got hurt and the guy was arrested. (BTW, I wonder why they used a photo from 2009?)

In the mean time, the number of shooting deaths by private car drivers in the US has more than doubled since 2018, to more than 1 per day. That doesn’t count threats with other weapons, nor any other kind of road rage, nor does it count accidental crashes. There are more than 120 deaths per day in the US in cars (the vast majority of “private transit”), and more than 2 million ER visits by injured riders per year.

And public transit is sketchy? Not compared to driving cars it isn’t.

Fairly recently: https://nypost.com/2025/04/15/us-news/cause-of-death-still-a...

A man died while riding the train, one person robbed the corpse, then another had sex with it..

I heard about that one too, very unique and weird for sure! But we could go through the stories of each of the few hundred fatalities that happened on public transit last year, and it wouldn’t even be a blip compared to the tens of thousands of people killed in gruesome accidents in cars. Incidentally I still remember the description of Paul Walker’s death for kinda the same reason that subway chainsaws and necrophilia are so memorable… it was freaky.

Except that wasn't a fatality. How often do people get robbed while driving in the highway.

For that matter, how many who came to harm on the highway were speeding vs random subway assaults.

People get robbed at gas stations, convenience stores, parking lots, and streets at fairly high numbers. I’m not sure what we’re comparing or debating here, but does your example actually count as a “robbery” if they died first? Would it not have happened if they hadn’t died? The anecdote you brought doesn’t seem to reflect on safety at all, it’s unclear what relevance it has.

Speed is absolutely a huge factor in driving injuries, one of the biggest. Again not sure how or even why to compare that to assaults on the subway, but googling briefly, the result I got suggests there were around 2k reported assaults of any kind. It’s a drop next to the nearly 3M ER visits, which may leave out large numbers of unreported, uninsured, or less serious injuries.

> People get robbed at gas stations, convenience stores, parking lots, and streets at fairly high numbers

Not where I live. the comparison/debate is:

> In contrast, the transit systems I've seen in Europe and Asia appear well maintained, clean, and relatively safe.

I think the point is, although (public) necrophilia is rare, so presumably is access to dead bodies, so the fact this happened is telling.

> does your example actually count as a “robbery” if they died first?

Of course it fucking does. picking someone's pockets is also robbery even if no confrontation is involved, and I'm pretty happy this guy is being charged with "attempted rape"; the fact the guy was dead doesn't make it not rape.

> The anecdote you brought doesn’t seem to reflect on safety

you don't see a correlation between safety, and the presence of people you cannot trust to be around?

> speed is absolutely a huge factor in driving injuries, one of the biggest. Again not sure how or even why to compare that to assaults on the subway

Speed, or speeding i.e. inappropriate levels of speed. The comparison is that an individual can control their speed, and the authorities can police it. There's not much you can do if you run into the wrong person on the subway.

Sure people have the option to control their own speed, and authorities can police speeders. The accident rate we have already accounts for that. Speeders are still dying, and they’re taking out more non-speeders with them than the total number of public transit deaths, by multiples.

Still not sure what the argument even here is. You’re being pretty forceful about one single, weird incident. Fine, but the fact of the matter is that driving in cars is causing a lot more injury and death than public transit, by several orders of magnitude.

As an outsider (Australian) living in the USA there's non stop propaganda for anything that could make a dollar if privatised. To the extent that many don't believe public run systems can function at all.

Anything disparaging public transit is played up to the extend even sitcoms will have disparaging scenes that are essentially "you took public transport? Are you poor?". The tax system is basically privatised, it's a pain to do anything without paying for tax software now with a lot of lobbying and propaganda that it's the only way. A lot of US citizens actually seem to believe that anything government run is inefficient (despite the lack of academic data on this) and demand the dismantling of all government institutions (see DOGE). Even utilities are often privatized with no competition (you just pay what you're told).

It's a bit crazy coming from a country where i had fibre internet at my regional home (the recently rolled out national broadband network) which is faster than the best connection i can get in the middle of silicon valley, i had affordable public transit with a universal tap on/off card that worked for all of them so no change/cash needed. Universal healthcare. A free online tax system that would start pre-filled by the numbers my employer+stockbroker entered in, i just had to quickly check through any federal or state specific exemptions i might qualify for. Etc.

Like it's madness the level of propaganda for this viewpoint that privatization is better and it's blatant why that propaganda is there - you privatize something essential like healthcare and you can leach vast amounts of money from everyone.

To this day my home country pays a fraction of US salaries yet the median wealth per capita is more than double the USA (Australia's 261k wealth per capita vs USAs 112k wealth per capita) since we don't get leached at every turn by privatized essential services. Yet in the USA they are clamouring for more of this as if that makes them wealthier.

? Japanese subways were infamously the site of a nerve gas attack in the 90s. 33 people were killed in mass knife attacks in Kunming, China in 2014. France has had a handful of subway and train attacks.

However, the point is that these incidents, along with the BART one, are unusual. Avoiding public transit because of them would be like avoiding flying because of air accidents or avoiding going to a theater or musical event because of the various massacres that have happened at them over the years.

That’s rare enough to not keep people away from public transport. Speaking from experience in Portland OR, it’s more the daily low level stress of having to keep an eye out for the meth crazed lunatics around you. There always seems to be one and they’re wildly unpredictable.

That's another way of saying that we need more public investment (in addiction intervention programs, for one), not less.

BART crime is up over the past decade. People don't avoid BART because of that headline with the chainsaw man. They avoid it because of everyday crime and violence.

I'm sure it's similar for many other metro transport options in the USA. California in particular has a rough go for many reasons.

It doesn't even have to be something bad or happen to you. One "my buddy had his bike stolen off the light rail" and several people will be turned off of ever trying to use it.

The "crime" story has been so twisted by propaganda and lies-by-statistics that you'll have to forgive me for saying that I can't take your word for it and will need numbers. Truthiness certainly can drive people to make poor, (unfounded) fear-based decisions.

> Part of the reason is that public transit for whatever reason appears to be unusually sketchy in many places in the US.

Police and policing culture is heavily biased in the United States to the protection of property and the interests of capital, so it makes complete sense they wouldn't give a fuck about keeping public transit or spaces that aren't highly trafficked by the wealthy very well protected. Maybe a little tinfoil hat, but if you take that into account, I think it makes perfect sense.

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