Totally random, and basically zero. People are awful at internalizing and handling tail risk.
This reminds me of the old Schneier article about how despite flying being the single safest way to get between any two places, post-9/11 people were so afraid they started to drive longer distances and the death toll was staggering. It's called "our decreasing tolerance to risk" and it's a good read. [1, 2]
It's true that "your odds are much better." But you can't control them completely. You can't control whether the person who hits you is drunk, tired or looking through coke bottle glasses and going 100mph. You're part of the equation. But even the safest drivers are going to be just about as safe as everyone on the MTA.
There were 88 deaths per two billion rides on the MTA. That's 0.00036%. Car deaths are 1.6 per hundred thousand, or 0.0016%, so 4-5X higher. Injuries though, several orders of magnitude.
This reminds me of the old Schneier article about how despite flying being the single safest way to get between any two places, post-9/11 people were so afraid they started to drive longer distances and the death toll was staggering. It's called "our decreasing tolerance to risk" and it's a good read. [1, 2]
It's true that "your odds are much better." But you can't control them completely. You can't control whether the person who hits you is drunk, tired or looking through coke bottle glasses and going 100mph. You're part of the equation. But even the safest drivers are going to be just about as safe as everyone on the MTA.
There were 88 deaths per two billion rides on the MTA. That's 0.00036%. Car deaths are 1.6 per hundred thousand, or 0.0016%, so 4-5X higher. Injuries though, several orders of magnitude.
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...
[2] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2013/08/our_decreas...