
Public transit is common in my 3rd world country and I was surprised how more unsafe it feels in the US. My theory is that it is a by product of the car centric society. For one there is safety in numbers and because it is so underused any one person is more exposed. But also because almost the only people that take the public transit is people who cannot drive or be driven for some way or the other it inevitably have a bigger proportion of mentally unstable people for example.

In medical/pharmaceutical context isn’t “abuse potential” specific to drugs that feels good/get you high… Like street drugs? In the case I think OP means that people is abusing for the results instead. Like people that do too much plastic surgery and loose track of what they first wanted to improve.