I didn't see anything right-wing about Radley's fact check other than his assertion that it must be so.
For those who haven't seen it, Radley tweeted[1] that of 760 million Subway riders, there were only 8 murders, so it is intrinsically safer than riding in a car.
The birdwatch message retorted that he was conflating 1 year of Subway death statistics against the lifetime vehicular fatality rate, and implied that his stats weren't an apples to apples comparison. Birdwatch recalibrated his statistic using (the generally more meaningful) "miles traveled" and determined that riding a mile on the New York Subway was ~1.8 times riskier than that same mile in a car, which is also probably wrong, but right if you use _the data he provided_ against "miles traveled" vs overall ridership.
The Birdwatch note also assumed he was using lifetime risk of dying in a car crash, which he wasn't (I double checked).
I am not 100% sure that miles traveled is the most meaningful statistic, FWIW. Wouldn't it make more sense to use hours spent on each form of transportation?
Appears that that Birdwatch was removed. I assume this was from people rating it after it appeared and the annual versus lifetime error was found.
Deaths per X miles traveled is the standard metric. Deaths per hour would be a very strange way to compare forms of transit given that the purpose is travel not wasting time.
A good habit for "fact checking" groups would be to NOT give the "right answer" in a case like this. Pointing out the error (yearly vs. lifetime) is good enough. No need to try to be an ad-hoc social scientist giving quick answers to questions that are probably not easy - or at least, if you want to do it, do it on a regular account.
For those who haven't seen it, Radley tweeted[1] that of 760 million Subway riders, there were only 8 murders, so it is intrinsically safer than riding in a car.
The birdwatch message retorted that he was conflating 1 year of Subway death statistics against the lifetime vehicular fatality rate, and implied that his stats weren't an apples to apples comparison. Birdwatch recalibrated his statistic using (the generally more meaningful) "miles traveled" and determined that riding a mile on the New York Subway was ~1.8 times riskier than that same mile in a car, which is also probably wrong, but right if you use _the data he provided_ against "miles traveled" vs overall ridership.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/radleybalko/status/15888941041333...