That's terrible yet I believe the point is that those are freak events that do not represent the statistical reality. It happens, sure, but it's very infrequent and it also happens that violence happen in cars too.
The question is how likely it is to happen per person per trip, or some way to genuinely compare both situation.
Plenty of comments here : "Well OK but I know this guy..." or "my opinion is..." whereas the article is precisely about perception vs reality.