this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Go go gadget spitball math!
Sources for average transit mode speed
Source 1:
https://www.gigacalculator.com/articles/what-is-the-average-speed-of-different-modes-of-transportation/
Source 2:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-travel-speeds-in-each-survey-year-and-standardized-mode-speed_tbl1_338604360
Source 3:
https://wonderlearning.blog/real-average-speed-us-train-facts
Ok, I'm USAsian, gonna be US-centric, and I'm gonna make some spitball roundings for easier math:
Average Actual Travel Speed:
Motorcycle: 50 mph
Car: 50 mph
Ferry: 25 mph
Train: 50 mph (long/medium distance)
Bus: 25 mph
Subway/Lightrail: 25 mph
Aircraft: 550 mph
Attempt at Conveying Math Proof
So we have:
D = deaths per billion miles. S = speed in miles per hour.
If we first solve for and find the time taken to travel one billion miles at speed S, we would do:
T = 1,000,000,000โ / S
(T is time in hours)
What we want is D / T
D / T = D / ( 1,000,000,000 / S)
->
D / T = (D * S) / 1,000,000,000
So, that's our rough conversion.
Using (D * S) / 1,000,000,000 , the OP graph becomes:
Deaths per hour of transit, by transit mode, for every billion miles travelled:
Motorcycles: 10,628.5
Car: 364
Ferry: 79.25
Train: 21.5
Subway/Lightrail: 6
Bus: 2.75
Aircraft: 38.5
So... thats basically deaths per billion hours spent using said transit mode.
Notes
You may have noticed that Aircraft are now more dangerous than Buses, Subways, med/long distance Trains, and are only ~2x safer than Ferries, not ~45x times safer, as they are with the OP metric.
One hour of Motorcycles transit, on the other hand, is now ~29x more deadly than an hour of car transit, ~276x more deadly than an hour of aircraft transit...
... as opposed to the OP metric, where a billion miles of motorcycle travel is again ~29x more deadly than a billion miles of car travel, but is ~3039x more deadly than a billion miles of aircraft travel.
tl;dr:
Basically, take travel speed into account, and aircraft become significantly more deadly per hour spent travelling in them, but the ratios between terrestrial and aquatic craft stay pretty similar, due to no one having yet proposed the ikranoplan as a mass transit solution.
(Historically minded readers may note the absence from these numbers of the 'revolutionary' hyperloop, as well as monorail, due to basically not fucking existing in real life.)
You may quibble about the actual average speeds of various transit modes as you please.
More Notes
Probably also worth noting that this is only deaths, not injuries, say, requiring hospitalization.
I imagine doing deaths + serious injuries would also change this graph significantly.
Also also, this doesn't take into account road rage that does not directly involve the vehicle, I don't think.
It does not include injuries or deaths on some form of public or mass transit where say, you get assaulted by another passenger, or something like that.
That could also tweak things, potentially, but I have no strong instinct about if it would really matter, or how... and, you could again do deaths vs deaths + serious injuries.