> Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger.
Old people generally have more to lose. Young people, especially young males, are well known to think of themselves as invincible.
So you're saying people don't do a rational analysis of the risks... but calling it "irrational" is strange? Lots of human behavior is irrational. It doesn't have to be unusual to call it irrational.
Overestimating the risks of one choice and therefore not getting the benefits of it, and incurring the higher risks of alternatives instead (for the elderly, being socially isolated at home or driving with impaired abilities) is the kind of irrationality that people would benefit from correcting, through education and changing social assumptions.
GP's wording implied that rational people take public transit because they've done the risk-benefit analysis, and irrational people don't. I'm not sure if there's actual evidence behind such a risk-benefit analysis.
> people would benefit from correcting, through education and changing social assumptions.
If the goal is to attract more people to use public transit, it would be vastly more effective to police the occurrence of antisocial behavior on it, instead of telling people that it's actually OK, the chance of stepping on a puddle of piss or being shouted at incoherently or being pushed onto an oncoming train is much lower than they think, and is lower than the chance of being injured in a car crash while driving to work. Whether or not that is true (and I wouldn't mind seeing some cold, hard data on it), most people will prefer to roll the dice with their car.
In other words: if you're a social architect keen on implementing your vision of a flourishing public transit system, it would be irrational not to account for people's loss aversion, whether or not that loss aversion itself is irrational.
And they might be right, something like 30% of traffic fatalities involve alcohol, so you can avoid driving after drinking and avoid times when others are drink driving, and improve your odds.
Also, the generic statistics of the probability of getting in an accident might not accurately apply to me. I might be a particularly good or bad driver. Totally anecdotal, but of my 28 years of driving, both of my small accidents occurred in the first two years.
>They don't want to see or be near those antisocial behaviors when they're taking transportation
I guess I think wanting to avoid seeing antisocial behavior is rational. It almost seems like that is the exact response expected in order to define the behavior as antisocial in the first place. :')
>Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger.
Older people are also more vulnerable. What might come across to me as just annoying or gross could be cause for more legitimate caution to a more vulnerable person. In my mind, when someone is acting particularly antisocially in public, there does seem to be a rise in my expectation (although slightly) that this person could do something violent.