Feeling uncomfortable is not irrational. Being anxious to take public transit, out of fear of encountering a mentally ill person that might act out violently, is actually a common fear. There is a stigma about talking about this. Careful about finding yourself in an echo chamber.
Here’s a study with a TON of data in it, and in the entire dataset where they looked at attacks on public transit(not just buses) from 2004 to 2021, they found 139 attacks, and 22 fatalities in the US.
Quite literally more people die in bus crashes each year, than are even injured from random attacks over this entire study period.
Being afraid of one of those attacks is Irrational unless you are also more uncomfortable getting on the bus just because of the likelihood of a crash.
Commonality has nothing to do with it, being afraid of spiders in North America is also extremely common, and completely Irrational. That’s why it’s called Arachnophobia (a phobia is a fear that is persistent and IRRATIONAL)
Literally from the first page of the report you cite
“While we noted the surge in random violence against passengers in all countries, including but not limited to the
United States, the structure of MTI’s database simply did not lend itself to proper analysis of the phenomenon
And the sources of data were inadequate and unreliable. Fearing that partial reporting would result in incomplete
and potentially misleading conclusions, in 2021 we decided to cease counting these events in our database while
we explored new data sources and database configurations that would allow us to better capture, analyze, and
portray the events. What this means is that the shift from terrorist to anit-social violence throughout the world, but
particularly in the United States and perhaps some of the other economically advanced countries, is far greater
than what we include in this report. which is why we call for a more robust accounting, and better strategies, for
dealing with this problem.”
It states the opposite of what you think it states!!!
No it doesn’t state the opposite. You are throwing out the entirety of the data just because the researchers admit that it may not be fully complete. They report exists because… their data is still mostly valid and gives important information.
Even if the real numbers were 50x the values they listed, which is absolutely absurd and obviously it’s not that bad, each year it would add up to less than 5000 attacks per year and only 68 deaths, across a country of 320 million people. Or about 1.5 people per 100,000 get attacked, and about 0.02 people per 100k die. That’s WITH me counting it at 50 times the value!
More people die to lawnmowers than that… (about 75 per year)
About 5000 Americans choke to death on food every year.
45,000 die in Vehicle accidents.
There are far more common things that will injure or kill you than getting on a bus and getting attacked, and unless you are worried about all of those first and change your behavior to reduce the risk, then worrying about this one to the point of changing your behavior is irrational.
If every time you went home, and had to step over a half naked homeless guy holding a half broken glass bottle, sleeping on your porch, your mental health would go into the toilet. That’s how people feel riding the subway everyday.
Feeling uncomfortable is not irrational. Being anxious to take public transit, out of fear of encountering a mentally ill person that might act out violently, is actually a common fear. There is a stigma about talking about this. Careful about finding yourself in an echo chamber.
Feeling uncomfortable when your risk of something bad happening is extremely low is quite literally how you define Irrational.
https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/default/files/Security Perspective 2022 (08.15)_0.pdf
Here’s a study with a TON of data in it, and in the entire dataset where they looked at attacks on public transit(not just buses) from 2004 to 2021, they found 139 attacks, and 22 fatalities in the US.
Quite literally more people die in bus crashes each year, than are even injured from random attacks over this entire study period.
Being afraid of one of those attacks is Irrational unless you are also more uncomfortable getting on the bus just because of the likelihood of a crash.
Commonality has nothing to do with it, being afraid of spiders in North America is also extremely common, and completely Irrational. That’s why it’s called Arachnophobia (a phobia is a fear that is persistent and IRRATIONAL)
Literally from the first page of the report you cite
“While we noted the surge in random violence against passengers in all countries, including but not limited to the United States, the structure of MTI’s database simply did not lend itself to proper analysis of the phenomenon And the sources of data were inadequate and unreliable. Fearing that partial reporting would result in incomplete and potentially misleading conclusions, in 2021 we decided to cease counting these events in our database while we explored new data sources and database configurations that would allow us to better capture, analyze, and portray the events. What this means is that the shift from terrorist to anit-social violence throughout the world, but particularly in the United States and perhaps some of the other economically advanced countries, is far greater than what we include in this report. which is why we call for a more robust accounting, and better strategies, for dealing with this problem.”
It states the opposite of what you think it states!!!
No it doesn’t state the opposite. You are throwing out the entirety of the data just because the researchers admit that it may not be fully complete. They report exists because… their data is still mostly valid and gives important information.
Even if the real numbers were 50x the values they listed, which is absolutely absurd and obviously it’s not that bad, each year it would add up to less than 5000 attacks per year and only 68 deaths, across a country of 320 million people. Or about 1.5 people per 100,000 get attacked, and about 0.02 people per 100k die. That’s WITH me counting it at 50 times the value!
More people die to lawnmowers than that… (about 75 per year) About 5000 Americans choke to death on food every year. 45,000 die in Vehicle accidents.
There are far more common things that will injure or kill you than getting on a bus and getting attacked, and unless you are worried about all of those first and change your behavior to reduce the risk, then worrying about this one to the point of changing your behavior is irrational.
If every time you went home, and had to step over a half naked homeless guy holding a half broken glass bottle, sleeping on your porch, your mental health would go into the toilet. That’s how people feel riding the subway everyday.
That simply isn’t the reality for almost anyone.
And we were talking about busses, not subways.