[splitrocket]

Isn't it supposed to be a "hell hole"?

Note: you and your children are more likely to be killed by a car in an American suburb than even be remotely harmed in any way by a stranger in NYC.

[chneu]

In general crime is down across the board big time. Violent crime especially. If you go back 20 years it's pretty crazy how much crime is down. It's even more startling if you go back further.

Americans believe in a lot of weird stuff that isn't backed by real world evidence. Newt Gingrich said it years ago, facts don't matter if people can be made to believe something. It's all relative and Americans have grown up with ridiculous privilege, which makes most people think immigrants are eating dogs or they go buy TP in bulk cuz of reasons.

People are horrible at understanding statistics. An American is more likely to die falling down a set of stairs than they are from a foodborn illness, for example. Or the average gun owner is more likely to take their own life with their gun than they ever are to use it against a criminal. Heck, that gun is more likely to be stolen and used in a murder somewhere else than a person is to use it in self defense. But most Americans believe they absolutely need a gun because of how dangerous the country is. Meanwhile, they're more likely to choke on a pen or get killed by a dog than to ever use that gun.

[happytoexplain]

>People are horrible at understanding statistics.

Yes, but people are also horrible at defining how a person "should feel" about statistics. A ton of statistics are apples and oranges in practice (e.g. falling down stairs vs food poisoning), because humans intrinsically care about more variables than statistics express (which is why we willingly drive cars, for the most obvious example).

It's just not that simple.

[happytoexplain]

Does NYC have a hell-hole stereotype? Other cities do, and 80's NYC does, and some people throw that shade at all metros, but I wasn't aware of NYC being specifically mis-characterized as being worse than average.

Regardless, this usage of statistics is an excellent example of one of the disconnects between Americans (and I assume other groups of people).

NYC is wonderful, and very safe as far as major cities go. Driving is much less safe, but is safe-ish. We live in a safe world, statistically speaking.

But it's critical to accept that people don't only care about statistics. Humans have emotions. If in town A your chance of being beaten in the street is higher than your chance of being injured in a car accident, and in town B the odds are equal and reversed, people are going to be more angry and critical of town A, especially if the car accidents are not perceived as being of unusually negligent origin (i.e. it's not because everybody there is drunk all the time).

Now if you slide the statistics to counteract the perceived negativity of the two things, at some point they equal out, theoretically, but in practice, it's apples and oranges. In other words, behavior and intention matter. Dignity and civilization matter - a lot. Autonomy and responsibility matter. Crime and deliberate carelessness are not the same as, e.g., a pure accident.

It's the same reason people are more outraged about being hurt by a robot than by a human-driven vehicle.

We have to accept that this side of human nature is intrinsic, and not by itself irrational, even though it is sometimes the source of irrational decision making, when people get too swept up in it.

[wakawaka28]

>Note: you and your children are more likely to be killed by a car in an American suburb than even be remotely harmed in any way by a stranger in NYC.

I spit out my drink reading this. You're delusional.

[happytoexplain]

Please try not to write like this.

Factually, it does seem like the parent is probably wrong. I'm not a statistics genius and don't know where to find the best data, but it looks like your chances of being killed by a vehicle as a pedestrian in suburbs is somewhere just south of 2.3 per 100k annually (in 2022).

Your chances of being subject to violence in NYC are harder to say. When most people are making a comparison like this, they usually mean as a visitor, on the streets and in the businesses, probably including day and night. But e.g. probably not including territorial crime or other flavors of locals picking fights with their neighbors. And also not including crimes that occur in residences. But maybe including terrorizing, e.g. being robbed under implied threat of violence? It also varies a lot by borough and neighborhood, so it depends on whether you want to represent a scenario where you might be anywhere in NYC, or just the places a normal person might reasonably be.

All that said, the violent crime numbers are high enough that it seems like they couldn't possibly get qualified all the way down to less than 2.3 per 100k annually. But that intuition could be wrong.