A metro based news source doing a study that sheds cities in a positive light..
Who would have thought?
Living in the rural areas is safer until something goes wrong, then the opposite is true because it takes so long to put police, fire and rescue on the scene,
Living in the rural areas is safer until something goes wrong, then the opposite is true because it takes so long to put police, fire and rescue on the scene,
You have to do some major Orwellian thinking to believe that living in cities is 'safer' than the countryside.
"But even with crime down, surely it's still safer to live in the quiet countryside than it is in the city? It turns out that's not true. According to a new study (PDF) published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, large cities in the United States are significantly safer than rural areas. The risk of injury death — which counts both violent crime and accidents — is more than 20% higher in the countryside than it is in large urban areas."
Turns out cities are safest places to live - CNN.com
I'm just as surprised as anyone else. Thoughts?
It makes sense because many city workers have office jobs, vehicle traffic generally travels at lower speeds, EMS response times/trips to a hospital are quicker and only small pockets of major US cities are lawless zones (tribal lands?) having elevated crime rates.
That, pretty much.
Also, the "country" essentially means that the landcape and whatnot are not optimized for human requirements and safety.... ie, you go walking in the woods and come to a ravine, there's no sign warning you and no guard rail to keep idiots from walking out on thin air. Then getting an ambulance on-scene is tricky when your present location has no address and is described something like "In the woods behind the Poteat Farm, on the south side of the creek just above the pond, next to a Poplar grove."
But I'll take country living, just the same. There's more to life than 'safety'.
The study and the article talk about the part in bold. They also talk about the part not in bold, and rural areas aren't safer in that context either, apparently. :shrug:
When you break out the specifics, this makes some sense. Sure you're more likely to be murdered in a dense urban environment, but you're much more likely to be killed in a car accident if you live somewhere where driving is a constant necessity; and car accidents kill a lot more people than murders do.
All in all, I would have expected the population density factor to even things out, but the data suggests otherwise.
Not me. Here is a protypical conversation that happens in the rural areas around me:
X: Someone was trying to break into my house and I called 911 and it took an hour for the deputy to get there.
PoPo: Well we only have 3 people to cover the entire county at night
X: Well you need to hire more people
PoPo: Then you will need to raise taxes to give us more money
X: More taxes? Not No but Hell effing No. We don't need no more damn taxes. We pay too much already
Substitute whatever you want for "break in" and Po Po with whatever government agency is involved, and the conversation is always the same.
on the plus side, in the city where we pay more taxes, you can have whatever 911 provides in about half the national average response time.
As for the car accident thing, that does happen a lot. Always hearing stories of someone happening upon an accident, usually fatal, where they estimate the wreck was hours before the discovery. When the sun rises, the rooster crows and somebody finds a dead body in a wreck that happened at 2:30 a.m.
Turns out cities are safest places to live - CNN.com
I'm just as surprised as anyone else. Thoughts?
That, pretty much.
Also, the "country" essentially means that the landcape and whatnot are not optimized for human requirements and safety.... ie, you go walking in the woods and come to a ravine, there's no sign warning you and no guard rail to keep idiots from walking out on thin air. Then getting an ambulance on-scene is tricky when your present location has no address and is described something like "In the woods behind the Poteat Farm, on the south side of the creek just above the pond, next to a Poplar grove."
But I'll take country living, just the same. There's more to life than 'safety'.
I'm surprised, although I've always been irked by people who think that it's dangerous living in a city. For instance, I'm from Minneapolis, where .00008% of the population was victim to a gun homicide in 2012. And that number is skewed, because it suggests that a gang member selling crack has the same chance of being murdered as a state senator from the suburbs. The hysteria about violence is media fueled. Americans need to chill out and, if they want to protect their families with a gun, that's fine, but they should also stop driving like idiots, which is much, much more likely to kill them.
The bottom line: know where you are in a city, keep your head up, dress down, stay off your cell phone at night or in bad neighborhoods, and you will almost certainly end up like me - never, ever threatened in any way.
Not me. Here is a protypical conversation that happens in the rural areas around me:
X: Someone was trying to break into my house and I called 911 and it took an hour for the deputy to get there.
PoPo: Well we only have 3 people to cover the entire county at night
X: Well you need to hire more people
PoPo: Then you will need to raise taxes to give us more money
X: More taxes? Not No but Hell effing No. We don't need no more damn taxes. We pay too much already
Substitute whatever you want for "break in" and Po Po with whatever government agency is involved, and the conversation is always the same.
on the plus side, in the city where we pay more taxes, you can have whatever 911 provides in about half the national average response time.
As for the car accident thing, that does happen a lot. Always hearing stories of someone happening upon an accident, usually fatal, where they estimate the wreck was hours before the discovery. When the sun rises, the rooster crows and somebody finds a dead body in a wreck that happened at 2:30 a.m.
Still, despite this, I find rural life more enjoyable. I'd like to see comparisons of mental health between the two. There's something therapeutic about the country and stressful about the city. Maybe that's just me though.
You have to do some major Orwellian thinking to believe that living in cities is 'safer' than the countryside.
Whenever there are more people around, especially congested racially mixed areas, crime of all kinds will be exponentially higher than in the countryside where you can expect people to primarily mind their own business. That's not to say the country is absent of crime, but is markedly lower than any of the large U.S. cities.
Besides, when zombies come out to play, cities serve as deathtraps. People would flock to the countryside for isolation. Isolation (relatively) = safety.
"But even with crime down, surely it's still safer to live in the quiet countryside than it is in the city? It turns out that's not true. According to a new study (PDF) published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, large cities in the United States are significantly safer than rural areas. The risk of injury death — which counts both violent crime and accidents — is more than 20% higher in the countryside than it is in large urban areas."
Turns out cities are safest places to live - CNN.com
I'm just as surprised as anyone else. Thoughts?
They are basing it on death rates, not incident rates. Sure, when you live 30 min from the nearest hospital, you are more likely to die in an accident because it takes awhile for medical people to get there. On roads where the speed limit is 55-75 mph, you are much more likely to die in a wreck than having two cars hit at an intersection moving at 20-35 mph. One thing I have noticed living in the country, one car accidents seem to way outnumber multiple car ones. Country roads are also much more likely to be 2 lane, sharper curves and more drastic hills. Out where I live, where the city folk come out all summer to the lake, we often have problems with drunk/tired people heading home from the lake going to fast in curves, passing in no-passing zones (yes, even on curves, dumb asses). What we don't have is having to listen to the neighbors all the time and gangbangers regularly spraying the neighborhood with bullets.
"But even with crime down, surely it's still safer to live in the quiet countryside than it is in the city? It turns out that's not true. According to a new study (PDF) published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, large cities in the United States are significantly safer than rural areas. The risk of injury death — which counts both violent crime and accidents — is more than 20% higher in the countryside than it is in large urban areas."
Turns out cities are safest places to live - CNN.com
I'm just as surprised as anyone else. Thoughts?
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