Fear of Crime on Public Transport
Passengers often report high levels of fear when waiting for and
travelling on public transport, even when levels of recorded crime
on the system are relatively low. In particular, women, and people
from black and minority ethnic communities are particularly
concerned about their personal safety on public transport. Research
also finds that feelings of insecurity typically increase with age.
Passengers are particularly concerned about being the victim of a
violent crime, with crimes such as pickpocketing being less of a
concern. Furthermore, women are more fearful of sexual crime and
harassment, whereas men tend to be more fearful of personal violence
perpetrated by other groups of men.
Differences In Fear Between Men And Women
Important differences in fear were found between men and women
in a recent study of evening travel to entertainment venues in the
centre of a northern English town (Brown, 1998). Not surprisingly,
many more of the women reported being afraid at car parks, waiting
at the bus station, and travelling on buses. More surprising was
that nearly half the women felt unsafe in taxis compared to less
than 5% of men. The same study found that women were not much
reassured by the presence of CCTV cameras – perhaps because these
can only pick up the more extreme forms of misbehaviour and cannot
readily detect harassing behaviour.Transport users report feeling less safe in certain environments.
Thus, a number of studies have confirmed that fears intensify after
dark, particularly when walking to and waiting for public transport.
For example, the household study carried out in England by Crime
Concern and Transport and Travel Research (1997) asked respondents
to rate their perceived feelings of safety at certain transport
locations. In comparison to males, females more commonly reported
feeling unsafe or very unsafe at all transport locations after dark,
and transport users tended to feel particularly unsafe walking to
facilities, waiting on platforms and travelling on the underground
(Figure 3).
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Females
Males
Figure 3. Percentage of respondents reporting feeling unsafe
or very unsafe at different transport locations. Source: Adapted
from Crime Concern and Transport & Travel Research (1997).
This study also reported a number of factors that made passengers
feel unsafe, which are summarised in Table 1. The authors note that
these factors worked in combination to impact upon passengers
overall levels of perceived safety.
Table 1. Factors contributing to fear among passengers. Source:
Adapted from Crime Concern and Transport & Travel Research
(1997).
Younger persons appear to share a similar pattern of fear to
adults. In particular, research into the factors contributing to
fear amongst younger passengers suggests that this group is most
concerned by groups of rowdy people, a lack of staff presence and
the presence of strangers. However, the researchers noted that the
presence of graffiti did not appear to be particularly intimidating
to this age group, except where the graffiti was perceived as
personally threatening.
See the section ‘Young People's Feelings About Personal Security
Using Public Transport’ in Crime Concern’s report Young
People and Crime on Public Transport for the Department for
Transport at:
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