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Yes, but the automobile industry does not want you to know that. The same auto industry that made crossing the road at any non-90° angle a crime.
Public transit isnt generally dangerous.
It just generally sucks. Depending on where you have to go and the public means to get there, it can take hours to get somewhere that takes 15-20 minutes by car.
Almost as if its intentionally designed to encourage car ownership.
...only because it has other Americans on it.
Absolutely true. My city had a very violent incident occur a couple years ago on the bus, and it is still brought up now as to why busses are unsafe. Meanwhile you can ask any of these people how many people died this week on the highways/driving and they have no idea. Busses feel unsafe because of personal perceptions, while driving feels safer because it's what you're used to. Feelings though are not facts.
Just like roller coasters. They seem dangerous because the 3-4 deaths a year are covered with a wild amount of attention.
I wish I could take a roller coaster to work.
People don't like giving up control. But the fact of the matter is that giving up control of a vehicle to a professional who drives for a living is way safer than doing it yourself. (I have family who refuse to fly and I've had this conversation before.)
Safety is not a concern in my area. The issue is that it takes two to three hours to get just about anywhere that is not a hub, and a high probability of not being able to return to the starting point until the next day.
Most brainwashed nation there is, was, and hopefully ever will be.
Meanwhile Australia is like "Hold my beer, cunts" while it drinks the anti-migration, pro-mining no revenue coolaid.
Another part of this is the disruptive people are more visible on public transport. On a bus you can see two people arguing loudly and feel unsafe from it, whereas on the road those same two people could be arguing just as much and you'd never notice it in your bubble.
The people arguing in the car are more dangerous though because:
One of them may be driving while operating a vehicle is not the biggest thing on their mind.
You can't see that they may be dangerous and move away from them because you don't know what's happening
I have never in my entire life heard anyone in the US say public transportation is more dangerous than driving.
This is not a thing. We are all very aware that driving is incredibly dangerous.
It's a very common thing. People are programmed to think it here. I heard someone mention a bus and 3 other people immediately piped up to agree they would never ride a bus because they would get stabbed/its far to dangerous. Fox news did it intentionally.
The fear of public transit is part of the racism and classism baked into our country.
Yeah, it's kind of odd that Americans seem to be scared to have to interact with strangers. Internationally, the American stereotype is of being very friendly, the person who sits next to you on the bus and wants to have a conversation - which is sometimes a bit socially awkward in countries where we pretty much ignore each other. Maybe they're different abroad? Or maybe we shouldn't stereotype lol
It's not about strangers == danger. I love in one of the biggest metros in the US and we have pretty crap public transport. The commuter lines from the suburbs are full of middle-income professionals, and nobody blinks about those. But transfer over to regular city lines, and it's mostly low-income minority demographics, and people will immediately caution me about taking those lines to get to my office.
Yeah that sounds like a classism thing. TBF we have the same shit here too, and I bet most countries do.
It's not entirely unreasonable either, I've lived almost all my life in inner city areas with all the problems they have. In fact, I've been part of the problem. I've been mugged, stabbed (crap stabbing, he wasn't really committed. But I still gave him my stuff lol), stalked, beaten, hassled cos of my race, all sorts of shit. TBF some - but not all - of that was because I was engaged with that inner city life as a junkie crackhead and occasional runner. Lived much of my life like that.
But underneath that, people make community. There's also lots of good people in those low income communities who will help you if you get in trouble, feed you if you're hungry, just generally look out for a fellow human. I've had a genuine friendship with at least one very scary person. Most people, if they're in their right minds, are pretty much okay.
I'd go so far as you say there's more genuine community in low income areas than there is in suburbia.
Obvs I don't know where you live and you would know much better than me what the risks are and what you're comfortable with. Not encouraging you to step outside your comfort zone.
And it feels kinda facile to say 'No war but the class war!' But it's also true that the wealthy want us to be scared of each other. They don't want us to build community. And that's one really good way of fighting back - just solidarity and acceptance with other people who might be different from us in one way or another.
Sorry mate, it's evening here and I just wrote a slightly drunken rant. But after all the shit I've seen, I feel like most people are generally pretty decent. And we gotta look out for each other.
I definitely agree with your observations on community vs neighbors.
I do take the bus, thru those poor parts of town as it's the only bus route that stops at my office (cheaper real estate, near an airport). There is definitely a need to be more alert and guarded in those areas, but not because of classism. It's because in the US poor == less access health care and mental care and food security. So there's a higher likelihood that a person who smells like piss asking for free bus fare is experiencing some mental issues that may lead to a dangerous situation. I don't think we need to fund better security or add express routes to bypass neighborhoods. I think we need to provide a stronger social safety network to reduce the number of people walking around with mental issues and desperate economic situations.
More likely the Americans who travel abroad at all are just a different type of person. As far as I know there are plenty of Americans who will never even leave their home state, some barely leave their own town. Those are the people who have never seen a Muslim and still think they are all terrorists. Those are the people who think entire cities are constantly on fire due to evil leftists. The people who travel abroad are rarely like that, because they know better.
In other words, we meet the sane ones when they're visiting our countries.
Yeah, in my experience regardless of country the people who want to travel are not the same ones that want a regression to isolationist BS. Especially with the US, where going to another country on holiday is not a casual thing (like with the massive influx of tourists into the spanish coast in summer, for example), the people who are there are generally are the ones that want to be there and are curious about other cultures. I don't know if that 1:1 correlates with being "nice" or "sane", but it certainly sets people up for not being intolerant and that's a big part of not being a jerk.
Also I was curious and looked up the figures on travel rates. According to these rigorously validated sources (i.e. "they looked pretty good to me") it looks like:
11% of US citizens have never traveled outside of the state where they were born. ^[1]^
27% of US citizens have never been outside the country^[2]^
29% of US citizens currently live in their home town^[3]^
^(^^source^ ^1^^)^ ^(^^source^ ^2^^)^ ^(^^source^ ^3^^)^
This is in a surprising contrast to the EU demographics, where:
37% of European citizens have never been outside their home country^[1]^
^(^^source^ ^1^^)^
(I could find no sources for the other statistics for Europe, I'm sorry!)
Important Note:
There are other commonly cited surveys (from far less reputable research groups than Pew, it really should be noted. One of them is literally just an ad for an AI language-learning app) which put the amount of americans that have never left the country closer to 40% (forbes) or 42% (preply) so ymmv with these numbers. Personally, I trust pew over Forbes or some slop factory, but for transparency's sake I felt I should include them!
Must depend on where you are. I hear it constantly in the South and Midwest. They're shocked and horrified when they learn about our coworkers who take the local light rail for their daily commute.
Plenty of stereotypes, especially in TV and movies, paint public transportation as populated by the poor and downtrodden, and therefore anyone out of their comfort zone on a bus or subway is a target for mugging or worse.
It’s just classism and racism.
And IMO also it would be highly unlikely that the average person would understand that driving is indeed more dangerous, at best most would only parrot the statement back.
It's just that the American infrastructure is so far behind. The subway trains are so old, dirty and rundown. Not to mention graffiti everywhere. Much of the NYC Subway system, specifically track switches and signals, is still manually operated, as it still relies on the 100-year-old technology.
Most busses are still combustion engine instead of electric like most of the western world.
The US train infrastructure is an embarrassment. What China build in 20 years in high speed train is insane. The US or in this case California agreed in the same year 2008 to start om a high speed rail network. The 725 miles of track will maybe completed by 2033. In the meantime China build over 15000 km of high speed railway track. The comfort on the trains can't even compare to air travel. Most Chinese prefer train over air.
As a Taiwanese, I have a perception that the US is dangerous, with lots of drug users and gun shots, and even in schools. Is that stereotype or fact?
There are lots of drug users, and lots of gun shots, and yes even in schools
But I feel you're vastly underestimating the size of the US.
There's a lot of nuance. I've lived in a major west coast city for years and I never heard any gunshots in public. Drug users are sometimes visible, it seems to be less common in recent years but you can see it at times. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "drug users", cannabis is legal in my state and its pretty common to see in public but no one really cares about that, to me "drug users" means hard stuff like fentanyl.
Violent gun crime is a real problem and it is much worse in other parts of the country. Most of the time it isn't random. There are still mass shootings and random violent crime. I assume Taiwan is much safer. I've never been robbed or witnessed any serious violent crime in my 30+ years living here.
I like public transit, but I've never had a crazy person try to sit on me in my car either.
lol this is the issue. It's objectively not dangerous (or at least not more so than driving) but there are certainly some very uncomfortable situations that can happen. And I think a lot of people can't really tell the difference between "this is an incredibly weird and uncomfortable social interaction" and "my life is in danger".
hah, I'm reading this headline like "I've never accidently sat in a puddle of someone else's piss in my car though so there's that."
As a European, I absolutely love public transit. But I'm not gonna lie, I'd never even approach an American subway station. That shit looks, and to some degree functions, like medieval dungeons.
You are afraid of public transit because of inflated crime statistics.
I am afraid of public transit because I was late for the bus in kindergarten and got run over chasing it.
We are not the same.
The biggest risk on public transit is, of course, the cars.
I visited St Louis to attend a conference some years ago. I had a free morning so I decided to visit the botanic garden (don’t miss it if you go there!). So my European mind made me look at public transportation: underground to bus station, bus station to destination.
I have to say it was completely safe and I didn’t feel threatened at any time. But I noticed something:
I was the only white guy in the bus. In both trips.
I insist, there was no danger. The rest of people were minding their own business and were mostly people going to work or going home. Some of them gave me weird looks, not menacing, more like ‘who is doing this guy here?’.
So maybe the problem is something that ends in -cism.
Personal experience and thus anecdotal I know, but the light rail line I used to take for work has had issues to say the least. A coworker ended up murdered in one of the more secluded stations two years ago. I've personally had a taser pulled on my face only to find out the guy was trying to sell it. All the cars reek of piss and I've seen someone having a mental health crisis try to peel off the thin padding off one of the seats.
I really want public transit to work but it does require a firm hand to keep people in line and safe in such enclosed areas. It's one of the few venues I'd actually welcome some increased security and fare enforcement in.
Those issues aren't intrinsic to the situation, the solutions are rooted in better social services and education, so people aren't struggling with untreated issues to begin with.
I'd rather have some dude freak out at me on the bus than behind the wheel of a multi-ton death machine