Correction — September 18, 2026: The earlier article compared unlike monitoring records to suggest a safety advantage for a particular commute. We withdraw that comparison; the available data does not support it. The original URL and publication record are retained.
A train service alert is not an injury record, and a highway lane closure is not necessarily a collision. Counts of those messages cannot measure a passenger’s relative safety.
A useful comparison must define the outcome (fatality, injury or disruption), the population (passengers, workers or people outside vehicles), a shared time period and an exposure measure such as passenger trips or passenger miles. The access trip to the station also needs consistent treatment.
Our federal road report counts fatal road crashes. It has no matched rail passenger denominator and cannot answer which mode is safer for your specific journey. For service planning, consult MTA’s LIRR information and 511NY road conditions.
This page makes no numerical rail-versus-road safety claim. We will publish such a comparison only with compatible, cited datasets and reproducible calculations.