Walking, Bicycling, Car, Motorcycle, Bus, or Train?
I left out boat and airplane because I’m talking medium distances, not long distances.
Many statistics show that walking is much more dangerous per miles traveled than driving. This may be hard to believe for some of you, but consider how most drivers behave when you’re walking across a busy intersection on the crosswalk. At the same time some pedestrian accidents are caused by Jaywalking.
Motorcycles are often said to be the most dangerous form of travelling, but some people claim that motorcycles have shorter stopping distances than cars, and have better acceleration usually. So maybe a skilled motorcyclists can avoid accidents.
Buses and Trains are often said to be the safest form of travel, but we should think outside of just bus/train accidents. Consider the distance people have to walk to get to the bus or train, and also consider that other passengers might attack someone inside the bus or train.
I assume that we’re looking on a per-mile basis, and not on a per-time basis? If I can spend 40 minutes walking somewhere and have a 1 in 2000 chance of an accident, or 5 minutes driving there and have a 1 in 4000 chance of an accident, then the chance per time is worse for driving, but the chance per distance is worse for walking. But assuming that our endpoints are fixed (I live here and work there), then the distance is the one we want to use.
It doesn’t matter what “some people” say. The stats are very clear; on a per-mile basis, the average motorcycle rider is exposed to 20X the risk of death that the average car driver is exposed to. The difference in non-fatal injury rate is likely even more dramatic.
If trains/buses are safer on a per-mile basis than walking, and my choices for a door-to-door trip are:
A) walk a 1/4-mile, ride a bus/train for two miles, then walk another quarter mile,
or
B) walk three miles,
Then option A sure looks safer than option B.
Physical assault on trains and buses is rare and generally involves only one or two passengers rather than the entire bus. I have no stats in hand to support my claim, but I’d be very surprised if, overall, driving were safer than taking a bus or train.
Don’t entirely discount boats since some people in NJ commute by ferry to Manhattan. Also there are ferry commuters to Seattle.
The real question is, if I have a four mile commute (as I, in fact, did before I retired) and choices were:
a 1/3 of a mile walk to a train, a 9 minute train ride and a 1/2 mile walk to my office; or
walk the miles; or take a bus to downtown and then 2 stops on the Metro; or
take the Metro for 3 stops, change to another one for 6 stops and transfer to a bus for a mile and a half.
Then which is safest. I used all four methods during my career, walking the most except in the depth of winter. Driving was never an option for me, but it should be thrown into the mix for comparison. I really don’t know but my conjecture is that the train, traveling on its own right of way, was the safest.
I’ve said this before, it’s not fair to judge this by time or distance. We need to consider how often you do it. For example, if you have previously been flying home to visit your family three times per year and you suddenly decided that you will drive instead, will you still be driving three times per year? Or will you change your behavior and only go once per year? I have yet to see an analysis that takes this into account.
The analysis usually goes like this: Let’s consider two people, A and B. A flies on airplanes 10,000 miles per year and drives a car 10,000 miles per year. B never flies on airplanes at all but travels to the exact same destinations that A does, always by car, for a total of 20,000 miles per year. I say this is unrealistic. Given that driving takes more time, person B would have a strong incentive to make fewer road trips. Alternatively, consider two people A and B. A flies on airplanes a total of 20 hours per year and drives a car 200 hours per year. Person B drives a car 220 hours per year. Who is safer? This is also unrealistic.
We also need to recognize that the modes of transportation are only half the paradigm. The other half is the location. For example, the danger of driving a car in town is very different from the danger of driving on the interstate, which is very different from the danger of driving on back roads out in the country.
One more bit, just to show how big a can of worms this really is. I saw a website that claimed that bicycling is safer than driving because the increased risk of injury from crashing is offset by the decreased risk of dying from heart disease, because the exercise of riding a bike makes you healthier, lowering your risk. Good luck sorting out all the details.
Now, in the case of commuting, one might argue that you have no choice but to travel to and from the exact same destinations every day, so we should be comparing miles not hours. But I would counter by saying this assumes (incorrectly) that you would stubbornly stick with the same job, and refuse to move to another house or apartment, regardless of how long the commute takes. The last time that I moved, I specifically chose a house that was closer to my place of work. My commute now is three minutes on a bicycle followed by three minutes on a bus followed by one minute on a bicycle. Compare that to ten minutes in a car, which is what I had before I moved.
There might be some effect from people moving to be closer to their work, but my guess is that that would be relatively small. Folks nowadays seem to change jobs more often than they change homes. And even if your job is stable in the long term, it’s less likely that you’ll be able to find a home to your satisfaction within a 20 minute bicycle ride than one within a 20 minute car ride.
It’s a slight nitpick but skiing is a valid transportation option (especially if you’re willing to include walking). So is hot air ballooning, or travelling in an airship. I bet all of those have more average fatalities per journey then cars, trains or planes… but perhaps not motorbikes.
Yes, but is it plausible to think that adding those in would make the bus fatality rate four times greater? That for every person who is killed in a bus accident, three are murdered by fellow passengers?
Unless the bus violence problem is at that level, bus is still the safest mode of transport. And, for buses to be more dangerous than cars, there would have to be between 5 and 6 murder victims for every accident victim on a bus.
In other words, I seriously doubt that the murder-by-fellow-passenger rate is meaningful in this comparison.
If you assume 1% of all murders in the US take place on busses then trains and busses are more or less equally safe.
If you assume 10% of all murders in the US take place on busses then trains are safer than busses, but busses are still safer than cars.
I don’t think either is a plausible percentage, but if you have can find a good source for what percentage of murders take place on busses I’ll adjust my numbers.
There’s been a recent push (by whom or how big of a push, I don’t exactly know, but I’ve definitely heard of it) to stop mandating bicycle helmets because that could discourage bike riding, which in turn could cause people to die earlier from diseases caused by being sedentary.
If we’re throwing violence on buses and trains into the mix, we would also have to throw “road rage” injuries and deaths into the car/road side of the equations.
Not if your workplace is in the city centre, where you can access a wider radius of potential homes with a 20-minute bicycle ride than by spending 20 minutes sitting in a car.
Most people have no idea of how far they walk or how much time they spend doing it, and obviously any statistics on walking safety would need to be based on self-declared (and therefore faulty) data input.
Motor vehicle deaths shows a high variance depending on the traffic environment, so the danger of driving in your town will be very different from that in mine. Even that mileage is self-declared. Statisticians have no access to my odometer.
“Commuting” would present a very different set of risk statistics than “traveling”, so which do you really mean?
Does “safer” mean with a lower incidence of death in accidents, or injury, or injury above a certain defined and uniform threshold?