550
There’s a common perception in the U.S. that taking public transit is dangerous. It's actually safer than driving.
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
550 points (97.7% liked)
Mildly Interesting
27762 readers
301 users here now
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
That's just a train isn't it?
Yes, but more thrilling!
Try the M2 metro in Lausanne, it’s steep enough to basically be a roller coaster haha
Same with air travel. No matter how you slice the statistics air travel is so much safer than pretty much anything else. Only trains are close.
Yet an unsignificant percentage of people have a fear of flying, but almost no one has a fear of driving/passenger.
Different kinds of danger. It's the same reason why a shark feels more threatening than your steering wheel or a bottle of beer; our brains are not good at recognising abstract threats. If you see a disorderly drunk guy one time on the train and felt threatened, your amygdala will remember that literally forever
nothing abstract about being cut off by an F150 or SUV crossing 3 lanes of traffic to take an exit at the last minute
True. But most of the time people feel pretty safe driving, safe enough to fall asleep while hurtling down the highway at 110kmph (70mph)
that only tells me that most people haven't evolved past primal instincts, and again is feelings. It feels dangerous, but it's not.
There's research done on our nervous systems and stress responses, and how they evolved in an environment that we're so estranged from today that they're basically irrelevant and maladaptive, but they haven't caught up to modern lifestyles.
Basically we have the same stress/anxiety/fear responses that have been hardwired since we were hunter gatherers. Back then, threats were acute and immediate. You see a big cat with sharp teeth, you have a sympathetic nervous response where you feel an adrenaline kick, you run away or you face it with a spear. You either get away from or eliminate the threat, or you die. Either way, it's over in like twenty minutes tops, and then the parasympathetic response kicks in. It purges all the stress hormones from your blood, replaces them with endorphins, and within ten minutes all your body's systems equalize and reset to their calmer baselines. Respiratory rate, heartbeat, digestion and metabolism, etc.
Nowadays, the perceived threats we face each day aren't like that. Deadlines, performance reports, layoffs, getting yelled at by your boss; being left by your partner for someone else; climate change, cost of living crisis, nuclear annihilation, random mass shooters, the list goes on. All these lingering threats that never quite go away and are always just hovering over us. Not quite enough to trigger a full fight-or-flight response. Just enough to let out a trickle of constant cortisol. And never really being resolved so that your parasympathetic response kicks in and replaces all those stress hormones with feel-good hormones.
A lot of modern self-care techniques are basically "body hacks" designed to use this notion. Grounding techniques to concentrate on something calm to move focus away from the stressors and activate the calming response. Focused breathing to tell your body it's safe and slow your heart rate. Watch a horror movie to activate a full adrenaline response so that your body can recalibrate when it passes. Go for a run or an intense workout to release endorphins and flush out all that cortisol.
It all centers on "how do we shift away from the body's stress response and activate the calming response?" And it's only necessary because of how radically different the modern context is from the one where those systems developed originally.
When I see a drunk driver not able to hold a lane I feel threatened and I remember that literally forever... It must be down to mediacoverage, ads etc, because also while driving on the roads you see fucking dangerous shit all the time