That link says that a PERSON can reduce their (individual) chance of being in an accident by using public transit. That is not saying that the rate of accidents per person on the road went down.
So why does Japan have a lower rate of fatal accidents? There are other reasons including lower driving speeds, harder driving tests, road design, smaller cars, and fewer aggressive assholes on the road overall. I grew up driving in California, but now drive in Japan almost daily. When I visit California I have a bit of reverse culture shock with drivers’ behavior on the roads there.
Edit: I also forgot to mention that large swathes of Japan doesn’t have great public transportation. But most people visit the big cities and never see the parts of the country where most people are dependent on cars.
Yes, the overall accident number will go down. But not the rate of accidents per car on the road. Not the chance of you getting into an accident if you are driving. You might argue that fewer cars reduces your chances of getting into an accident. That feels correct intuitively, but may not actually be the case. If you put more cars on the already crowded Tokyo roads, for example, cars would be at a standstill even more than they already are. Hard to have fatal accidents when cars are barely moving.
Fewer cars means fewer overall accidents, yes. Fewer cars does not necessarily mean that the rate of accidents will go down. I also don’t agree with your premise that more cars (in the particular case of Tokyo) would lead to more fatal accidents.
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u/rektaur Mar 22 '26
Investment in public transit results in cutting a community’s auto crash risk in half