Last month, the US Department of Transportation released its new National Road Safety Strategy, which sets an ambitious new federal goal of achieving zero traffic fatalities. Getting closer to this goal would be a momentous achievement; About 40,000 people are killed on American roads annually, and the death toll has risen sharply in recent years.
The Ministry of Transport’s strategy includes a set of constructive policy steps, ranging from incentivizing safer cars to building “complete streets” that protect pedestrians and cyclists. But it does mention one option that seems obvious: convincing people who currently drive to use transit instead, which is safer per passenger mile.
“Having fewer cars on the streets reduces accident exposure,” Roger Millar, Washington state’s transportation secretary, told me. As a result, “the total number of casualties should be lower.”
I asked Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about this possibility when I interviewed him last January about road safety. “I think the shift toward transit is something people typically think about in the context of climate,” he replied. “But there is also a lesser-known benefit in terms of safety that we need to take seriously.”
Unfortunately, this feature was not mentioned in his agency plan. To be fair to the Department of Transportation, it’s not often highlighted in other safety resources either; Transportation officials and even many safety advocates generally assume that people will continue to travel the way they are now. It’s a missed opportunity, because using policy to nudge travelers toward transit and away from driving could reduce deaths — especially if policymakers focus on car trips that are more likely to end in a crash.
“I’ve seen almost no discussion about changing tactics to save lives,” said National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy, who made little effort to hide her frustration. “It’s not been a focus at USDOT, not at the state DOTs, and certainly not at the transit agencies themselves. But as someone who rides transit every day, I know I’m less likely to get into an accident, just by getting on that train.”
The numbers back it up. Ian Savage, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, examined U.S. accident data over a decade and concluded that 7.3 people died in a car or truck per billion passenger miles, representing 30 times the risk on urban rail. And 66 times the risk on the bus. (If you’re wondering, motorcycles are the most dangerous vehicle of all, while traveling by plane is the safest.)
There are countless reasons why taking public transportation is safer than driving a car. Trains (and sometimes buses) have a designated right of way, reducing potential collisions. Compared to cars, trains and buses are also very heavy, and “you’re basically wearing a steel suit,” Savage says, providing extra protection for passengers. The relatively slow speed of urban buses is another factor. “When something bad happens, it’s usually not that bad,” Savage said.
Then there’s the person behind the wheel (or in the conductor’s booth). “Perhaps the main difference in safety between the modes is the operators,” Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in an email. Compared to cars, transportation “eliminates many dangerous (drivers), such as teenagers and people over 80. Operators are also less likely to text, drive drunk, and the like.” By implication, converting particularly risky car trips to transportation can yield significant safety benefits. “A drunk person decides to use the subway service when it’s extended into the evening, and that’s definitely a good thing,” Savage said.
However, Savage cautions that crash data can mask some risks, making the car-to-transit comparison not entirely accurate. “Transit is not door-to-door, so what you do to get to and from the station will matter.” Urban planners call these “first-mile and last-mile” trips to public transportation. “If you’re in a place like Houston, where you have to cross a four-lane arterial road with faulty sidewalks, that’s risky,” Savage said. Discussions of transportation safety typically revolve around agency vehicles and operations, but that can be short-sighted. “Getting people out of their cars to walk along unprotected highways is not a good idea,” warned Millar of the Washington State Department of Transportation. Safe street infrastructure is vital for transit commuters, as well as those who travel entirely by bike or on foot.
Even with this caveat, transport is generally considered safer than driving. “Reduced driving is clearly associated with decreased fatalities,” Ralph Buehler, a professor of urban planning at Virginia Tech, wrote in an email. “Removing cars and trucks reduces deaths dramatically.” Ken Kolosh, director of statistics at the nonprofit National Safety Council, agrees: “Mathematically, without a doubt, the shift from driving to transportation will be good not only for the environment, but also for safety.” (Disclosure: I have done consulting work with the National Security Council.)
European experience seems to support such claims: congestion charges in London, which pushed people away from driving, were shown to reduce traffic deaths. Although its population is one-third larger than that of the United States, the number of deaths resulting from traffic accidents in the European Union, which is rich in transportation, is less than half the number of deaths resulting from traffic accidents annually. “I think a change in style explains part of it,” Savage said, noting that Europeans often drive slower in urban areas.
Despite the seemingly life-saving benefits of getting drivers into transit, safety advocates rarely emphasize it. “It’s a huge gap from what I saw in Vision Zero,” said Tara Goddard, an assistant professor of urban planning at Texas A&M University, referring to the global effort to completely eliminate traffic deaths. “People come from the advocacy side because of a car accident. They’re thinking about the danger of vehicles, rather than the idea of changing gears.”
Homendy, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, also blames the tunnel vision of government agencies, pointing to branches of the Department of Transportation that focus solely on highways, transit and trucking. In fact, the Federal Transit Administration has a web page dedicated to safety, but it is a resource for transit agencies themselves, ignoring the relative safety of bus and train travel. (On the other hand, an early 1900s streetcar sign informed passengers: “Death rides the highway, but you’re safe on the trolley.”)
“It’s not just USDOT,” Homendy says. “It’s also the states, where everything is isolated rather than comprehensive.” As a result, policies that can save lives by changing travel decisions – such as expanding late-night transit service or eliminating free weekend parking – rarely sell as such.
The media also rarely mentions how dangerous driving is compared to other situations. As a result, the public is left to draw its own conclusions about the risks. This is a problem, because inherent cognitive biases can lead us to make incorrect assumptions.
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Studies show that people usually feel safer in vehicles they control than in vehicles they cannot control (i.e. a car compared to a bus or train). Worse still, rare traffic accidents are often a major topic in the media, while everyday car collisions are barely recorded. “It’s part and parcel of the way we talk about accidents,” Millar says. “We had an Amtrak train accident here, and three people died, and that was international news. That same week, 10 people died on the highways in this state, and it was the same the week before that, and the week before that.”
According to the “availability discovery” in psychology, intense interest in extremely rare plane or train accidents can lead us to unconsciously exaggerate their frequency, while media disdain for car accidents leads us to underestimate the risks of driving. One extreme example: A study found that the switch from flying to driving following September 11 led to more than 2,000 additional traffic deaths in the United States.
With our perceptions of road safety skewed, making rational choices is difficult – but not impossible. In Washington, D.C., a subway derailment last October did not cause any injuries, but it was still a major media event. Local news channel ABC 7 rushed to the scene and interviewed a passenger who evacuated the train.
“Are you taking the subway again?” one reporter asked.
“Yes, I will certainly accept it,” the woman replied with remarkable composure. “It’s still comfortable. How many times have there been car accidents and people still do driving?”
