Are Trains and Transit Really More Dangerous? The Data Say No

By Jim Mathews, President & CEO

Every few weeks, someone tells me that we live in more dangerous times than ever before — that we need more surveillance, more armed police officers, even military troops in train stations. I even hear sometimes from some folks that Amtrak trains aren’t safe because we don’t go through airport-style security to board them, or that we should post armed marshals on every train.

I understand where that sentiment comes from. Between 24-hour news coverage, social media’s algorithm-driven outrage, and the trauma of past attacks, danger can feel more present than ever. But feelings aren’t the same as facts. When we look at long-term data, the evidence is overwhelming: we are not living in more dangerous times. In fact, by many measures, we’re safer than ever.

Over the past three decades, violent crime in the United States has dropped by nearly half, with huge drops in things like robbery (down 74 percent), aggravated assault (down 39 percent), and murder (down 34 percent). FBI data show that murders fell nearly 15 percent in 2024 alone, and violent crime overall was down about four and a half percent from the prior year.

When it comes to transportation, passenger rail is among the safest modes of travel in America. On a per-mile basis, riding a train is roughly 15 to 25 times safer than driving a car, with about 0.43 fatalities per billion passenger-miles compared with about seven fatalities per billion passenger-miles for cars.

Most telling of all? Nearly all rail-related deaths have nothing to do with crime or terrorism. They occur at grade crossings, or involve trespassing on tracks — tragedies, yes, but not the kind of onboard violence that critics imagine or that some people, especially first-time riders, fear. That 0.43 fatalities I just cited includes a lot of people who aren’t actually riding on trains. Once you exclude pedestrian deaths, deaths from car-versus-train, and suicides, the fatality rate is even more dramatically lower – only 0.15 deaths per billion passenger-miles.

The risk of becoming the victim of a violent crime while aboard an Amtrak train is vanishingly small. In fact, there is some statistical evidence to suggest that while the particular type of violent crime might be different on a train or in a transit vehicle compared with being in a car (theft or mugging versus, for example, road rage), even in your car you face a significantly higher overall statistical risk of being the victim of a violent crime than on a train or in a transit vehicle.

“There are about 500 times more crimes against motorists than transit passengers, and, accounting for exposure, transit travel has significantly lower crime rates per passenger trip, mile, and hour,” Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute reported in an eye-opening study from about ten years ago.

Amtrak’s own police data show steady improvement even as ridership grows. Crimes against persons declined in 2023, and total reported incidents fell versus prior years. Nationwide, rail safety also continues to improve: fatalities per 100 million train-miles dropped from 6.7 in 2022 to just 0.9 in 2023.

Look, at some level I get the impulse to “do something.” When the Transportation Secretary is talking about crimes on trains and transit at almost every public-speaking opportunity, it’s hard not to feel compelled to take some kind of positive steps to address it.

But the reality on the ground doesn’t match the realities on board, which means that airport-style screening and universal armed patrols would offer very little measurable safety benefit. They would, however, introduce massive costs, delays, and privacy concerns — and risk turning one of America’s last remaining open, civil, and efficient travel experiences into a fortress.

Instead, what I sense happening is a little different. Based on my own extensive travel on Amtrak and on public-transit systems around the country and the world, what some tourists and first-time riders are experiencing is a kind of formless dread. Their social-media feeds are filled with videos or pictures of violent crimes happening in and around train stations and transit stations, and the algorithms intensify feelings of anxiety because they are built on the premise that anger and fear make more revenue-producing clicks than facts or pleasant things. So, you get on a train or a subway car, and start getting a vibe...and that vibe makes you feel “unsafe.”

I’m going to say something controversial here, but in my view there is a difference between "unsafe" and "unpleasant." When I see tourists on social media talk about feeling unsafe, what they usually go on to describe is instead not about safety but about something else. They didn’t like seeing the delusional homeless person muttering obscenities to themselves. Or, worse yet, they don’t like seeing people who are just different from what they’re used to back home. If you're from a place where everyone looks, and talks, and acts just like you, seeing people who DON'T look, and talk, and act like you can make some people feel uncomfortable. That's not "unsafe," it's just "unfamiliar," and for some people "unfamiliar" equals "uncomfortable," and “uncomfortable” means “it must not be safe.”

My purpose is not to stir up a pot, but instead to share data and facts which, I hope, will help to dispel the “vibe” and maybe help you dispel that vibe with your family and friends who don’t, or won’t, ride trains.

The data remind us that common-sense vigilance doesn’t have to mean fear, and safety doesn’t have to mean surrendering the freedom that makes train travel so appealing and so civilized. Rail travel already delivers one of the safest transportation experiences available, and for the most part it does it without full-body scans, invasive searches of your personal items, and all the rest that we’ve just accepted and normalized in airports, football stadiums, and concert venues. In real, measurable, terms, we are safer today than we were a generation ago. And that’s something worth remembering the next time someone insists that maybe we should all get our luggage searched and take our shoes off before we take a train trip.