Read a book? Watch videos on a phone? Play videogames? I've done all of these on the train before. I wouldn't dare do these while driving.

I assume

> What can I do on public transit that people *don't* do in a car in traffic?

was an intentional and funny word choice to include terrible drivers doing the things you listed.

Browse your phone? Everyone does that in public transit, drivers don't do that in cars. You could read HN and post messages for example.

> drivers don't do that in cars

See the problem is that they do, right before they drive into a pedestrian or stationary object.

Don’t? Probably nothing. But they shouldn’t be reading or using their laptops while driving!

Get harassed by homeless? Or just men in general, if you’re a remotely attractive female (using the broadest term available as it certianly isn’t restricted to what we’d appropriately call “women”).

Do you think public transit is full of drunkards? Its mostly tired people getting to or from work, those doesn't harass a lot of people. When its late and its a lot of drunks on public transit sure, but not on normal commutes. Columns I've read from women getting harassed its mostly about dance floors at clubs, not commute trains, when people aren't drunk they mostly keep their hands to themselves.

A crackhead grabbed my girlfriend’s hair on the subway recently

Tell me, anti car fundamentalists, what are the odds that happens in a waymo?

There is extreme denialism here about the problems of public transit in the United States. Crime goes unpunished. Homeless addicts run amok.

Large groups of people are simply not safe, as police are not empowered to remove problem people.

That happens because the transit isn't used by enough normal people. The need for security personnel doesn't go up with more normal people, when you have the levels Europe has the crackheads etc gets removed from the trains.

You basically ensures your transit system will remain shitty forever, but that is easily fixable. The more good actors that use it the cheaper fixing it gets per person, you can have people who clean and security remove such bad actors at low cost since so small fraction are causing bad events or pissing where they shouldn't. Good people overwhelmingly outnumber bad people in the real world.

you can reduce the per capita rates of incidents by adding normal people, but even in a city like NYC where most households don't own a car, the subway still has an unacceptable amount of non-violent incidents like the aforementioned one (yeah yeah yeah i know the likelihood of dying on public transit is less per mile than driving)

Where do you live and what is your background that you think the only way a man might harass a woman is if he is drunk?

That is true everywhere, drunk or affected men are overwhelmingly more likely to harass women than sober men are. Subways here in Europe are full of pretty women, they don't go out of their way to take a car any more than men are, when I count gender on subways there are usually more women than men.

When was the last time you saw women avoid grocery stores because they are afraid of getting harassed? Well used public transit is that level, it isn't something women worry much about compared to many other much larger threats.

Grocery stores are different because bums aren’t allowed to sit around there waiting for a woman to come by for them to harass. If they were, I’m confident many would object.

It’s clear that you don’t have much concern for the harassment experienced by those woman columnists you read, so I don’t think there much more I can say here. I imagine if you were to have any direct experience at all with the problem, your position would be different.

That all said: what’s your upside? What do you gain which you consider to be worth these women whom you do not know sacrificing their safety?