Serious New York City subway crime has fallen so much that a rider’s daily odds of being victimized are about equal to being struck by lightning any given year, reports the New York Daily News. Some 1,157 felonies have been committed in the subways this year – an average of 6.1 a day. Just 427 robberies have been reported in the underground this year, compared with nearly 9,300 in 1990, says New York Police Department Transit Bureau Chief James Hall.
With an average of 4.9 million riders on the subway each weekday and 2.5 million each weekend day, the odds of becoming the victim of a crime on any given day is approximately 1 in 714,000. That’s about the same odds a U.S. resident faces of getting zapped by a bolt of lightning in any given year. Hall said banning subway riders from walking through the cars of trains has become a key crimefighting strategy. Police have issued more than 6,500 summonses for walking or riding between cars this year – and arrested 1,160 others who were stopped after violating the rule.
Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/2007/07/11/2007-07-11_subway_is_a_safe_bet.html