I’ve certainly overheard a couple of conversations on the El this week about the terrible events on the DC Metro earlier this week, when one train on their Red Line collided with another in Maryland. Of course, transit safety is critical, and we should all hold our transit agencies to a high standard. But Matt Yglesias, who mostly blogs about politics, but also produces some of the best transit-policy blogging I’ve read, reminds us as to just why the DC Metro crash is such a big story:
One story you’re not going to see leading tomorrow’s newspaper is “97 dead in fatal car accidents.” And yet in 2007, this country saw 37,284 people die in car wrecks. That averages out to 97 per day—much more than the seven people whose death in yesterday’s Metro crash has acquired so much coverage today. Obviously in part that’s because driving is much more popular than transit. Still, according to the Census Bureau 87.7 percent of people get to work either by driving alone or in car pools, while 4.7 percent take transit. That’s about 18 times more driving than transit usage. By contrast, 14 times more people die in car wrecks on an average day than died on the rare day that anyone died in a train crash. On a typical day, of course, the United States has zero train-related fatalities.
Something to think about the next time someone tells you that driving makes them feel safe and in control.
