It’s such a sad reality, and I’m sorry that you experience that.

I think part of it is the mandatory driving culture - if you can afford a car you will drive, so you only take public transit if you can’t afford to drive yourself. That, plus public transit in the US is typically only available in high population cities, and it feels like there’s little law enforcement around transit locations.

I’m sure there’s other reasons as well but it’s a really unfortunate situation altogether.