I have no idea how they gather their statistics, that’s just the first source I found! Let’s use NHTSA instead and assume their numbers are better; even so, over an order of magnitude more people die from drunk drivers than do whatsoever on a daily basis on public transport, even after you adjust for ridership.
> Should not it be a quarter of that, 12 people?
I adjusted the 300 public transit deaths up by a factor of 4, which is the same as adjusting the 17,000 or 12,000 drunk driving deaths down by a factor of 4.
> Your 300 fatalities in public transit could be interpreted as the fatalities caused by the public transit, are you sure they count people stabbed and/or shot waiting for a bus?
Why should it? Drunk driving statistics don’t count the number of deaths that happen when people are arbitrarily murdered at gas stations or convenience stores, even when the perpetrator happens to be drunk. They also don’t include other forms of influenced driving, road rage, or anything else that would further bring the number up.
Unless you have a specific reason to believe that there’s a silent epidemic of bus station shootings, this reads as special pleading.
It’s surprisingly difficult to find breakdowns by cause for deaths on public transit. But here’s one: from 1990 to 2003, there were 668 deaths in the subway system. The majority were suicides, the largest minority were accidents, and 1.5% were homicides[1]. In other words, even during a 13 year period when NYC (a city that’s routinely characterized as dangerous) was much more dangerous than it is currently, less than one person was murdered per year in a transit system that carries millions of commuters daily.
[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23639439_Epidemiolo...
