one of the reasons why i bought a goddamn manual threadmill instead of walking around the city is because, from where i live, some of these drivers tends to hit pedestrians who are in the side of the road and on the FREAKING pedestrian lane, like idk whats up with these people...idk if they're in a rush? a total nutcase? or just too stupid to drive a vehicle.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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Fuck Cars
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Plenty of comments here : "Well OK but I know this guy..." or "my opinion is..." whereas the article is precisely about perception vs reality.
I've literally never heard someone claim that buses and trains are more dangerous than cars.
Every single city community group in the US has a vocal population that swears the local bus service is filled with nothing but homeless murderers and thieves and that's why public transit should never be built and will never be used by anyone normal
Ask people how they get their kids to school and if its safer to drive them or send them on the bus
Eh... I did and they didn't mean safety from accidents, they meant safety from crime. Nobody is going to pickpocket (might get carjacked at an intersection) or insult you (well...) in your car but in the subway they might.
Same, but I have no doubt they're out there.
If Camel said with a strait face that cigarettes increase health, I'm certain there have been public advertisements at least insinuating that a car is safter than public transportation.
Same as people think cycling is dangerous. In reality, cycling makes, on average, your life longer, while driving a car makes it shorter. And this is because lack of excercise is killer number 1, and cars are like a comfortable but very unhealthy drug.
Cycling is dangerous. It's inherently a lot safer, but when you get bumped by a car in the morning because some wage slave didn't have time for their morning coffee that day, it's a lot safer to be in a car. Couple this with unreliable and expensive public transport and you have the recipe that made me give up on cycling to school/work after over 25 years and get a driving licence. The tipping point for me was being hit by a car going at least ten miles over the limit on a straight, totally empty road in broad daylight while wearing a hi-vis jacket and barely walking away from it. A few inches the other way and I would certainly have been killed. Nope. Nope nope nope. I've put on a lot of weight since then and I am not enjoying car ownership much, financially. But sadly I have had a traumatic experience and I just feel nervous about cycling now, even after all those years.
Cycling is dangerous.
Sure, there are accidents with bikes. I do not want to discount your trauma (I had a traumatic car accident waliking when I was a pupil), and I had on the bike a collision with car whose driver took a left turn without looking.
I also have seen two probably fatal bike accidents in my life, where cars turning rolled over bikes and a lot of blood was left on the street.
The numerous terrible accidents with cars, when we pass wrecks on the highway, we somehow don't register that much.
But the whole point is, you will live objectively and statistically life longer when you use a bike. Our views and risk perception are a bit distorted. And this is because cars are also dangerous to our health.
Lol not where I live. People get stabbed on busses here.
Crazy, people get shot in their cars here
That's terrible yet I believe the point is that those are freak events that do not represent the statistical reality. It happens, sure, but it's very infrequent and it also happens that violence happen in cars too.
The question is how likely it is to happen per person per trip, or some way to genuinely compare both situation.
Does that happen daily or hourly?
It's safer because the incidence of crime is very low and the incidence of car fatalities is comparably high.
But these modes of transit also put you in close proximity to strangers. And we've deluged our already-somewhat-xenophobic brains with news gore that amounts to "Stranger Danger!!!" squarely fixated on mass transit. Also doesn't help that most modern mass transit lines have a disproportionate number of Evil Poors.
So anxiety is higher for infrequent users of mass transit. And that's a much bigger influence on people than the real (and overall very rare) risk of car injury or crime.
Even within the realm of fatality statistics on transit, about half are trespassing and suicide events (from FTA data for 2024). So the rate of homicide and violent incidents towards regular passengers is even lower than the reported statistics on the dangerousness of transit.
This is the first time I hear such an assumption. Are you sure it really exists or is common?
Carbrains have always been convinced that public transit is dangerous because it puts them in the proximity of the poors
Weird.
I know a lot of carbrains, a and I have heard this precisely zero times in my life.
They do say it's expensive, though. And then the "I have children, I therefore couldn't survive without a car", while in reality children are in reality an obvious argument against using a car.
But yeah, the argument about expenses is funny.
The total cost of owning and using a car is around 300 € per month. (And my parents say they are paying aboout 400 €)
A public transportation ticket costs some 85 € per.month.
It's amazing that people are willing to pay 300 € to save 85 €. And I woild say that's an argument I hear from at least 30 % of my city's adult population.
(But "dangerous" is an argument I have never heard against public transportation, in any case)
It's likely you haven't heard of it because it's a US thing mostly
It is absolutely true. I grew up in a large urban city but now I live and work in rural, very conservative area. People who have never been within 20 miles of an urban area think it is a garentee that if you step on a train or bus, there will be someone running end to end giving everyone the "London Special" 🔪. Some people seemed genuinely surprised to hear that I've never been robbed or had my car stolen. It is fucking wild what happens when someone watches nothing but Fox News all day
i'v been mulling over the idea of just how you even begin to deprogram half a country off of such engrained propaganda.
it's not even just fox news either, murdoch owns WSJ and like half the "independent" radios across the country
I've heard it before including from people on Lemmy. However, I usually hear it more where people are concerned with their personal safety around other people and not with their safety cage.
It is easily the most common answer I hear to the "why don't you use transit in this city that is very well served by a robust network and also REALLY sucks to drive in?" question.
(Everyone that drives, including myself): Yeah but I'm a good driver. I'm more worried about other people on the road then myself.
For real though, if I had the option to take public transportation to where I work I would take that pretty much daily. Cars are expensive and dangerous even if you are a good driver. And if my car broke down I could lose my job. The fact that so many people in car centric countries don't even have a back up when things go wrong is abysmal.
I know a bunch of people who readily admit they’re bad drivers. But there literally are no classes in their country to improve their practical skills.
The fact that so many people in car centric countries don't even have a back up when things go wrong is abysmal.
“We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” is the theme with car-centric countries. Or they tried, built 1/10 of a solution and then absolutely neutered it by making it somehow secondary to cars. Where they do have practical public transit it’s absolutely slammed full of people but they wont even maintain let alone invest in it.
I’m not sure who is making the argument that these are less safe, but I’d have to imagine that if someone is making that argument it’s on bad faith.
How could you believe that being surround by hundreds of poorly qualified drivers to and from work every day is more safe than a single trained (haha) professional handling that task while all the tired and bored people sit back and relax?
Anytime they expanded the local rail system in Virginia all the drivers would say it increases the chance of a train to car collision. Wankers.
this is the country that'll only expand rail-crossing to safer tiers if enough peoppe die at one, right?
Of course, driving seems safer than getting on a bus or climbing down into a subway station. Motorists have a sense of control and feel protected in their vehicles. In contrast, transit travel means sharing enclosed spaces with crowds of unpredictable strangers, which naturally invokes anxiety.
Yeah, but social contracts go out the window whenever people feel protected. Whether that be by a steel frame or internet anonymity. When exposed, everyone behaves much better.
They have to actually exist as options, though...
Not safety, Way way way fucking safer. Does anyone think otherwise?
This is gonna shock you, but everyone who watches Fox thinks otherwise. They legitimately think because they have a big mega truck they're safer. I've heard my own relatives say you're more likely to get stabbed and robbed on a train than a car accident. They bought fully into the car brain.
Yes, but jumping in front of a moving train is much more dangerous than jumping in front of a parked car. Checkmate, car haters!