Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

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> Come to Europe

Anecdotally, among myself and my friends we have more stories of problems with theft and encounters with hostile people from very brief travels to Europe than all time spent on public transport in the USA. To be fair, I haven’t lived in NYC where public transport is famously more dangerous.

I also suspect that foreigners are more targeted for wallet thefts while traveling in Europe.

However, watching multiple friends get pickpocketed on European public transport and having to shake some sketchy people who were being aggressive with women in our group during our brief travels shattered my illusions that European public transport is universally superior in safety.

Edit to add: I also thought it was funny when we met up with someone’s friend in a populous European city who refused to ride public transportation with us. He would drive his car from point to point and meet up with us at the destination. He seemed to believe that the underground was not something people his age liked and was surprised we were riding it without a second thought.

Famously more dangerous? NYC? What on earth are you talking about

It’s mostly a meme not backed up by any serious facts. Politically, both sides get kudos for pretending cities are more dangerous than they actually are.

I was quite careful to say "Northern Europe" because there are some very touristy places that attract criminals who specifically prey on tourists.

I could imagine Paris and London in that list, despite both being very safe for locals (and.. both being Northern Europe)- but perhaps less safe for tourists.

I would imagine Prague being a middle-European tourist destination that is plagued much worse by this (but, also, very safe for locals- I lived there briefly).

Where were you in Europe?

Not to pick on you specifically as I think your comment was fine but I always get a chuckle[1] about the "duality of europe" that you see on the parts of the internet that are dominated by the white collar english speakers.

Depending upon the issue you might reduce europe down to the rich western bits. You might include or exclude the former soviet influenced areas depending upon the context. You might only look at nations on the Mediterranean or only exclude them, etc, etc.

Yet whenever you look at the US you always include the whole thing no exceptions.

[1]just to be clear, by "I get a chuckle" I mean "the way we just accept this behavior is a condemnation of the community and the people who make it up"

> I was quite careful to say "Northern Europe" because there are some very touristy places that attract criminals who specifically prey on tourists.

Okay, but then why can’t we Americans just exclude the bad parts of America and only allow you to compare to the good parts?

Why must every America-Europe comparison be about the worst case American cities (usually taken from headlines) but only compared to a select subset of European locations?

Because the USA is one country and Europe is a collection of vastly different countries.

You would likely agree that the USA and Mexico are incomparable and its sort of the same, though the EU evens some things out: its much less far reaching than a federal government.

That said: happy to compare the best case US public transport to the Nordics. Literally anywhere in the Nordics to anywhere in the US.

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