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but there’s crazy people on the subway
You don’t think there’s crazy people on the highway? And on the highway they’re controlling a 2 ton killing machine in a sometimes stressful situation.
I’ll take the crazy guy yelling in the corner of the subway then see what he’s like behind the wheel of one of those huge pickup trucks during traffic.
Yeah like what the fuck? Every time I drive on a highway I encounter at least one potential life-ending moment, where if I hit the breaks one second too late I’ll die. This is absolutely a trillion times worse than the slim chance of getting a subway car lit on fire lol
Every time I drive on a highway I encounter at least one potential life-ending moment, where if I hit the breaks one second too late I’ll die
What highway is this?
Fury road.
If you’re having near death experiences every single day, that has to be something you’re doing wrong.
Then you are not giving the proper distance. If you experience this every time you drive you are probably the problem.
Also those scary moments are fun. Maybe that’s just a me thing though.
If you can’t conceive of a situation where you need to slam the breaks due to external factors despite following the recommended 2-second following distance, you’re ignorant of the depths of bad driving. Have you really never been cut off before?
I would go so far as to say that if you’re not noticing at least a single example of dangerous driving nearly every time you leave the house, you’re probably not aware enough to be a safe driver.
I would go so far as to say that if you’re not noticing at least a single example of dangerous driving nearly every time you leave the house
Dangerous driving, not slam the brakes every time lol
Brakes, not breaks.
And no way are you driving safely if that happens every day.
I only drive safely on the days I choose to drive - and yet, I somehow still always see unsafe driving every day.
Every time? No. If it happens every time, you’re the problem. This shit is outta pocket. Or you live in thunderdome.
Just a fairly normal North American city, actually. So yeah - thunderdome.
Dear diary,
I met mad max today, great driver, very aggressive.
Sometimes it’s “just” a dead girl hit by a speeding SUV a couple blocks away from their school. Even something as simple as a bit of extra speed has a remarkable influence on life or death. Both in avoiding and mitigating harm.
Not as exciting as Max Max, but nice movie reference.
^^^
I’m with you but driver’s licenses are meant to help weed those out. I think they are likely rarer but not uncommon.
Me and the boys boarding be like
I’ve done both.
Safest place in the subway is at the front of the first car near the motorman. Second best is the front of the second car. If there’s trouble you can move to the first car [with the motorman easily] and have two doors between you and the troublemaker.
Public transport is directly correlated with ridership numbers. When using public transport is the best mobility option, then everyone from all backgrounds will use it and that leads to less bullshit being done.
The numbers are pretty early but the congestion pricing in NYC has apparently already led to less crime in the subway.
The latest Climate Town vid is great.
You also shouldn’t use your phone if you’re right near the doors. It’s too easy for someone to grab it and exit the car as the doors close.
The fact that this kind of thinking is necessary makes me so sad and angry for you.
It is sad. It wasn’t always like this. When I was growing up I could walk anywhere as a kid and every adult on the block had their eye on me. A lot has changed in NYC in 40 years.
My brother in Christ, NYC was fucking wild in the 80’s. How are you even comparing?
It was, but neighbors were more aware and vigilant. People spent more time outside in the streets in residential areas, and knew their neighbors. I remember walking with my sister to get Italian ices when I was no more than 10 years old, and every other building had neighbors out front waving hello. We also couldn’t do anything we shouldn’t be doing without someone yelling from across the way. Now the same neighborhood seems lifeless and desolate. People just stay inside and mind their own. It’s just not as communal as it used to be.
You should read “Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, because it talks about this. Basically, having more people on the sidewalk makes for healthier, safer, neighborhoods. Having everyone drive instead of walking is really bad for pretty much every metric we care about- safety, the environment, economic activity.
I will. Thanks for the recommendation!
It’s really sad, but for perspective, take that crime of theft, multiple it by tens of thousands up to millions of times larger, and you have the CEO’s, the oligarchs, the billionaires, the POTUS.
We know how to fix this - it starts with holding their biggest crooks accountable, then making sure everyone has their basic needs met, social trust gets restored as people are no longer desperate.
You’re awesome, just thought I needed to say that.
Yeah, but having your phone stolen is much more immediate and tangible.
Yeah. On my city’s light rail I can literally leave my phone charging next to my seat when I go to the bathroom and no one will take it. In fact it’s common for people to do that.
Our public transit doesn’t have bathrooms or phone chargers :(
Meanwhile:
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/04/04/two-teens-stabbed-in-bronx-subway-station-robbery/ (yesterday)
https://pix11.com/news/local-news/manhattan/woman-raped-inside-nyc-subway-station-nypd/ (Mar 17)
Sure, crime has gone down recently in the subway to pre-pandemic levels, but there was still shit like this regularly pre-pandemic too. Definitely wouldn’t leave your anything alone on the subway in NYC.
Also afaik (been a while) there is no bathroom for you to worry about leaving your stuff, people just piss in the subway cars themselves.
Now find all the deaths on the highway in the last month :)
I’m not claiming that there’s not more deaths on the highway, that’d be crazy considering the highways span the entire country rather than the NYC metro area and also carry more people than the subways, so like, simply by raw numbers “duh.”
the highway network in the United States had a total length of around 4.2 million statute miles. One statute mile is approximately equal to 5,280 feet.
NYC subway length: 248 mi (399 km) (route length) 665 mi (1,070 km) (track length, revenue) 850 mi (1,370 km) (track length, total)
Yeah 4.2 million miles compared to 248 miles? Again I’m required to say “duh.”
Conversely, though I never claimed The Highways were paragons of safety, others claimed the Subway is, when in fact the crime is simply “back down to pre-pandemic levels” which is to say “very much still there, but better, sure.”
So compare the deaths per mile traveled, per time travelled, per person who uses each as their main mode of transport, whichever metric you think would give a good representation of the relative risk of taking the subway versus driving on the highway
See the thing about transit crime is that it’s such a huge deal that it hits the news so hard when anything like that happens.
Meanwhile how many people have died driving in the last month? It’s such a huge number that it’s not even worth reporting on, it’s just “normal”. Fear is in the eye of the beholder.
I’ll take my chances on the extremely rare likelihood that something happens to me on the subway vs the probability that I’ll be maimed or killed while driving.
I think in reality “rape” is just more of a news story than “car crash.” Really seems obvious to me, actually. Car crashes happen by accident, rape and stabbing takes intention. People being intentionally run over also happens to be a news story usually, fwiw. “Crime” just sells more than “accident.”
Like, a mechanic at your local shop losing a finger is a rare possibility, but unless you live in a small town where it was literally the only thing that happened this week it won’t even be on your local news at 11 either, but if his coworker chases him around the shop and cuts his finger off you bet your ass it’ll be covered by the tri-state area.
In any case I never claimed car crashes were a myth, I claimed that “crime has dropped to pre-pandemic levels” means there’s still plenty crime, as there was pre-pandemic. You saying you’d leave your phone plugged in on the subway and walk to one of those “bathrooms?”
I’m saying you can’t call one mode of transportation “unsafe” while completely ignoring the elephant that is the dangers of driving.
Interestingly, a not-insignificant number of sexual assaults by strangers happen in parking lots, apparently because victims are often alone, and there’s nobody else around. But those don’t tend to make the news.
Ya’ll have a bathroom on your light rail? Are we still talking about simple metro systems are is that not a full-blown “train”(I put it quotes because they’re all trains, but you get the idea).
It’s like halfway between a train and a tram and it goes partially underground.
I think light rail is the right name?
To me, a light-rail is something that operate within a municipality. Like, it’s for commuting and isn’t too intense, but differs from a subway because it is not strictly underground. Having a bathroom in a light-rail setup would be like having one on a metro whereas having a bathroom on an inter-city train makes a whole lot more sense.
I can’t speak for NY, but…
In Los Angeles I used the busses, subway, and trains for two to three years going to work. For one year it was an hour each way riding 2 trains. After that, it was 2.5 hours each way switching between busses and trains five times.
While I truly appreciated the Metro, it was often not fun. Usually everything and everyone was fine. But, at times I’d be riding with drugged up dangerous acting people. Other times just super annoying people. Sometimes the trains would be packed shoulder to shoulder full of people. And sometimes, in the middle of LA, the train would stop, and say “everybody off” without an explanation, and everyone would exit the train and have to figure out where to go.
Once I was able to drive myself, I no longer had to worry about any of the issues I had before. All I had to deal with was traffic jams. Annoying, but I did feel safer.
Yeah, but LA has a shitty public transport system.
Take a look at any major European city. Subway systems with a train interval of 2 minutes that get you across the whole city in 40 minutes max.
I’ve never almost died on a bus.
I’m more terrified of driving a car in a city than on a highway. In a city one small mistake can mean killing a child or something. On the highway I can go at a moderate speed in the right lane without distractions.
Either way I prefer rails tho
Already afraid of this on an e bike.
Saw a mom walking on the road (next to a perfectly available sidewalk) with her small child following her 2 meters behind her.
Fucking hell if that kid randomly ran to my side, I would have hit her.
I hate this shit so much
I saw a car hit a teenager on a bike the other day. Dragged the kid a bit and then just sped off.
Somehow the kid seemed fine. Got up and rode off after a moment.
This was in Brooklyn, by Barclays center (a very crowded spot). Fuck cars and double fuck irresponsible turds that would drive off after nearly killing someone.
In my state, statistics show that there are more fatalities on rural roads than in metro areas… and 80% of us live in the metro areas.
My car is 900kg with a straight-through muffler. No kid is going under it. Just don’t drive a tank through school zones.
straight-through muffler
I hope you throw a rod through the oil pan.
If you don’t like it, I’ll take it off.
Either way you risk a possibility of being rear-ended.
Let’s be real: they’re terrified that they might be forced to be near poor people, minorities, gays, and mentally ill folk.
Their “News tm” is constantly telling them cities are hellholes full of junkies and murderers and murderous junkies.
Most of them have no clue how the world outside their pickup truck windows works.
Bingo. I’ve talked to many of them online and it always boils down to this. It’s never that they’re actually in any danger. It’s just they feel scared. They drive their big trucks because it makes them feel safe.
Meanwhile puny me rides the subway daily.
That’s nice, no medication I’ve found yet lets me ride public transportation without constantly freaking out from human proximity but I bet it is just so pleasant to have a normal brain
They’re weak, scared, and pathetic. Too xenophobic to interact with anyone or anything outside their coddled circles that might make them feel “”“uncomfortable”“”.
Might surprise you, but on feeling scared: I once heard that a slim majority of SUV drivers were women. In some ways it makes sense - if they’d normally be vulnerable walking the streets alone, a less vulnerable vehicle gives them a feeling of safety.
It’s not a surprise. There’s some good analysis of vehicle advertisements, and one of the big emotions they push with SUV ads is the feeling of being safe in a ‘bad’ situation.
Fear based advertising (in general)
Article that is often quoted about fear in advertising
One of these things is not like the other
or they could be, like me, mentally ill folk who really cannot handle being forced to be around other people
But generalizations are fun aren’t they!
You arent the main character bruh
That is an extremely callous thing to say.
No it isnt lmao. Cheer up buttercup 😘
Everyone is the main character of their story.
His story is other peoples stories are the same as his story.
It’s pretty telling your response to my ‘I struggle to live like normal people’ is ‘get over yourself’
Fuck all the directions of off you rancid smegma farmer
I didnt say get over yourself, you literally just made that up
What a badly tuned LLM you are…
No, I think that’s a fair summary of your attitude.
No, I think thats a fair summary of your attitude.
OK, wow. You’re a real piece of shit.
Every single conservative man is mentally ill?
His username is angry autist, just BTW. Bit of a hint there.
Add a little nuance to your argument and I’ll engage
Also you didn’t parse the sentence correctly, I was specifically referring to MY mental illnesses
Add a little nuance & good faith to your conclusion on my initial statement, and I’ll engage, too! Maybe you should re-read things to nake sure you’re not misunderstanding something.
— Sincerely, someone who is also struggles with mental illness, including severe anxiety & agoraphobia.
Nothing in my statement said conservatives, you made that up out of bad faith so why are you demanding good faith now?
Why cripple myself with rules you refuse to follow?
…did you not read the text of which this entire post is about, or…?
Um, that’s not my post. That’s not even from lemmy.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Where I live, half the year it’s painfully cold outside. Then in the summer we alternate between unbearable heat (because we’re not used to it) and torrents of rain recently.
We also don’t have a subway system in any of our cities, have lower density cities because we don’t have a huge population in general, and have better driver education than much of the US.
I realize it would be optimal for society for me to take public transit, but in these conditions I’d rather drive. And if I need to go somewhere close, walking is quicker than public transit (and in the winter, generates SOME heat. Standing around at a bus stop, not so much).
I promise if I ever move to NYC, I’ll take the Subway when something is out of walking distance. I did when I visited. It was fine.
I’m kinda germaphobic, and they never seem to clean public transit. Chewed gum everywhere, littering, bodily fluids. Like I’m sure 99% of people are normal, but just 1% of dumbasses ruin it. NYC, Philly, I’ve seen it all. I heard people say other countries such as Japan has clean public transit, not sure why the US can’t do the same… 🤔 (I bet the politicians stole all the funding)
My ideal transport would be getting launched out of a cannon, then I deploy a parachute after the GPS notifies me when I’ve arrived at the destination. Patachute deployed, I land on the roof, like a boss. 😎
Great for introverts too. 🫠
(So until public transit is fixed, I rather be fired… out of a cannon)
Cleanliness depends a lot on culture
Odds are they are American and if you haven’t noticed our culture is pretty hell bent on rejecting civic duty
Other countries actually clean, sanitize, and maintain their public transit including trains and metro. They do this by shutting it down for a few hours in the early morning/ late night
NYC is the only one in the US I’m aware of that goes 24/7. I know the Philly one doesn’t.
Are they maintained or just shut down for a few hours?
Well it’d be disrespectful to a friend of my mom’s to say they don’t…but also, it’s probably dirtier than the NYC one tbh. My point is that it’s not the root cause.
Other countries are not so me centric as America is either.
Fully agreed but even clean as a whistle I am not comfortable being around that many people ever
Conservative men are terrified of everything. Perpetual fear and petty grievances are the cornerstones of the entire conservative ethos.
Driving is the highest-risk activity that the average person engages in on the average day.
It’s dangerous, stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. I also think it is a significant contributing factor to our sedentary lifestyles and expanding waistlines. I’m resentful that the decision to go with automobile-based infrastructure was decided before I was even born and that I’ve never had a viable opportunity to vote against it.
What I really hate is that driving is a privilege. But not needing to drive (i.e. walkability, bikeability, and good transit) are also privileges. Fucked either way it would seem.
I actually like driving for the most part, and I think that I’d like it even more if people who weren’t forced to drive weren’t driving, and if the people driving were well-trained and medically cleared as safe to drive.
If we had those things I could do a hundred miles an hour on the highway everywhere. It would be awesome.
I think that I’d like it even more if people who weren’t forced to drive weren’t driving,
I actually don’t mind driving so much as I mind driving in heavy traffic. Driving along on an empty road, or lighter traffic at least, isn’t so bad.
But society pretty much forces everyone to drive. Even people who don’t want to drive or are simply bad at it.
Now imagine if everyone you met on those low-traffic days knew how to zipper merge, and were intimately familiar with the idea of “keep right, pass left.” And their cars had to be maintained perfectly to even be on the road.
This training and maintenance is why some sections of the Autobahn have no speed limit.
The average person only owns a fraction of a car, but I do believe that existing on a street either inside or around cars is the highest risk an average person is being subjected to on an average day.
Keep in mind that only a small number of privileged people own a car, but everyone has to deal with them and are subjected to their risks.
Being a pedestrian in proximity to a driver might be riskier, unfortunately. Most driving safety standards - including vehicle and infrastructure standards too - do not adequately protect people outside of vehicles.
It’s the reason I don’t bike, even though distances are reasonable. I consider using an unprotected bike lane next to a busy 45mph stroad to be a matter of when (not “if”) I’m involved in a collision that could cause serious injury or even a fatality. All it takes is one driver with their face in their phone.
There never was a vote to make it legal or illegal. And it was widely hailed as a great idea at the time. It was considered the best way for large cities to dig out from under the literal mountains of horse shit they were drowning in and that was polluting the ground water and killing children and adults alike from disease. Plus it gave people far more freedom to move about faster and father than they had by foot, horse, or train. Like it or not, the internal combustion engine has given you, personally, everything good and bad that you have at this very moment in time.
But, like most great human ideas, there are always unintended consequences no one sees until they happen.
All of human history has been us solving problems only to create newer, bigger, more complicated problems.
Sure but now it is holding us back we need a nationwide high speed train network we are stuck in the 1930s while lots of other countries are in the 2030s
Actually, there was a lot of push-back. People weren’t too happy that suddenly great big hunks of metal were hurling through public spaces at lethal speeds – but the car manufactures had money, so the press and the politicians sided with them.
check out Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter D. Norton
Every time I get scared on a train, I just imagine a video of a train versus a car
I imagine the fear isn’t so much about accidents as it is about interacting with crazy people or crime.
Or getting on the wrong train and be carried away in the wrong direction and miss your appointment.
That person wasn’t in the country legally, so not a situation that would apply to many people.
Although the idea of accidentally driving to another country is very strange to me, there’s no way to leave my country without knowing it.
I’m terrified of riding the nyc subway because I don’t understand how it works amd I’ll get lost.
Just use your phone now, use transit directions. It’ll tell you exactly where to go. And if you go to the wrong place, you can always just go back
Also, you only pay when you enter the system, and it’s a flat fee no matter how far you ride. So if you fuck up and get on the wrong train, just get out and get on the correct train. You don’t have to pay again until you actually leave the system. (I think there are some stations where you can’t change directions without exiting to the street and re-entering, but that’s pretty uncommon.)
its really well designed and easy. with a smartphone, navigating the city is so easy I think a 10yo could do it. that said, my parents might have trouble, but only cause they get freaked out.
I just looked at your metro map. As a San Diego resident, we need to step out game up. We barely have a trolley system compared to your subway.
I grew up on a farm, basically the rural part of a rural county in a rural state. When I visited San Diego I got on a bus going the wrong direction (which isn’t a thing I even realized you could do wrong). Ended up having to wait an hour for another bus in a sketchy part of town, at night, while in cosplay.
Felt like that episode of SpongeBob where they get stuck at Rock Bottom.
I live in San Diego (well, in east county) and it’s particularly a mess here. The geography leads to no real structure, roads just sorta go where they can fit. This and a general lack of public transportation infrastructure means it’s easy to get lost or take forever to get where you’re going. Luckily it’s pretty safe, as cities go. We have a lot of unhoused folks but they’re just here for the weather. I’d rather be stuck downtown somewhere at night than out here in the rural SD area, buncha fuckin white supremacists are my neighbors
Trains go either this or that direction. Get on the train that goes the direction you want. Get out of the train when it is where you want to be. Done.
As an American, I hate busses and will drive over using public transport every single time.
I imagine in other places in the world, your public transport runs on time, is well maintained, and is clean. Here is such a hit or miss it’s anxiety inducing to the point the road is more relaxing and no, I can’t say public transport is safer given my personal experience.
You can’t generalize about public transport across the whole of the USA. It’s very variable between different cities, and some have pretty good systems.
You’re right, because I live in a city with one of the better systems, and I still would take a car over using it given the option.
You mentioned one of the better systems but still mentioned busses? All the more enjoyable public transportation I’ve been on in the US has been trains and subways. My bus experiences haven’t been that enjoyable, but not horrid either …except that one time I had to sit near the bathroom at the back.
Still, train/subway experiences in Chicago and New York/New Jersey/ Long Island were vastly superior to driving for me. There’s also a new line going from Orlando to Miami my sister has been using that sounds wonderful. Unfortunately doesn’t really reach where I currently am, greater Atlanta area. Unfortunately I have to drive most of the time for work etc, with no subway lines or when trains from my home to work, and the traffic is terrible at times.
Depends on the bus / area.
There is real time bus tracking now in most places so you can see when things will arrive = WAY better for dealing with traffic (note traffic is a thing for cars as well)
I’m in Portland OR and of course a bus going through a bad area is more likely to have people who are “not ok” (addicts) but the vast majority of our busses are clean and climate controlled and filled with perfectly lovely friendly people.
And risk assessment is based on what is likely. My aunt smoked her whole life and never got lung cancer so my “personal experience” is that smoking doesn’t cause cancer. You see what I’m saying?
Cars are more dangerous than busses. Period. You might not like them for any number of perfectly valid reasons, and a specific bus in a specific area might be more dangerous - but the point of the post is that personal preference and accurate risk assessment are not the same thing.
Yes.
Didn’t know that but that’s cool and helpful.
Straight up I disdain the majority of humanity drug users or not and hearing poors talk about how bad their lives are is depressing as fuck. Put it this way, I hate the poor so much I hate the rich for making them poor.
On that note of personal experience yes cars are dangerous but in a car I have control and my driving can make it a lot safer or dangerous and so far, my driving is safer than most folks I know. Knock on wood.
It’s not really a choice for people. I get up at 3am and wait an hour for the bus just to be on time at 6am.
Can’t do much and any job requires a license even if isn’t driving related - which instantly nullifies me if I use other acceptable forms of identification.
Public transport is definitely safer, just more eventful. It’s nice when you enter a train that smells like fecal matter with a lady just eating a whole rotisserie chicken on the other side. It just follows the same guidelines as other public spaces, don’t be a nuisance and make yourself small. It becomes entertaining to have these stories.
Some lady didn’t know to just shut up and complained nonstop about the shit on the floor. But then she made a comment about the lady and her chicken, it was small and innocuous. She then kept talking to the conductor.
However, that is how you get slammed after you got stunned by some airborne rotisserie chicken.
So it’s usually okay, just has rules like any house.
Mehhh I made bad choices and have to live with them, Pity me!
don’t be a nuisance and make yourself small
That’s the most un-American thing I’ve ever heard.
I’d rather risk death on the highway.
