Safety
US-based research on traffic safety shows that public transport is safer than private motor vehicles, and that transportation systems which have their own infrastructure are safer than these means which don’t.
- Regional Passenger Rail (RPR) is the safest way to travel. Its casualty rate – average number of injuries and fatalities per billion passenger miles – is little more than one-quarter the rate for motor vehicles.
- Rail Rapid Transit (RRT) is somewhat safer than Light Rail Transit (LRT). RRT is almost twice as safe as motor vehicles, and LRT is more than one-and-a-half times safer than motor vehicles.
- Traveling by bus is the least safe form of public transport. Buses use the same infrastructure as motor vehicles, and so buses also suffer from traffic congestion and accidents on the roads.
- Private motor vehicles are the most dangerous form of at-grade motorized travel, with motorcycles the most dangerous of all.
There are reasons why public transport is safer than private transport. One is that since public transit's capacity is greater than that of private vehicles, public transport use can reduce the number of distinct vehicles on the road, and this in turn decreases the potential for accidents.
Read more about this topic: Light Rail
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Perhaps having built a barricade when you’re sixteen provides you with a sort of safety rail. If you’ve once taken part in building one, even inadvertently, doesn’t its usually latent image reappear like a warning signal whenever you’re tempted to join the police, or support any manifestation of Law and Order?”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)