To think villages are safer than towns than cities

[skybluee]

What are your thoughts?

Villages > towns > cities?

Or is it just perception?

Also interested in whether dark is safer than light, or whether it's simply linked to the time of day (6pm vs 9am).

The majority of deaths from road accidents are on country roads.

Other than that, I suspect that on the whole, villages and small towns are safer than larger towns and cities.

Surely it depends on the village. Some villages around me are not havens of peace and tranquility.

Crime figures can also be misleading. The crime figures for my general area are very high, but it also includes the town centre so has high theft, assault, ASB rates.

On a general overview yes it probably is right, but there are also places that will significantly go against the grain.

Live in a village about 10 mins drive from a town. Isn’t cut off or isolated lots of good transport etc but feels so safe.

I live in a tiny village in West Wales. People leave their doors unlocked, the children leave bikes and scooters in their front gardens or on the pavement outside and they're never touched. There's such a low crime rate here, the newspaper stories are hilarious as the "crimes" are things like an escaped goat, or a runway tractor. Damage to property is unheard of. There's no graffiti - we'd know who it was 😁

It's amazing - I've lived in towns and cities and I feel so much safer here after being the victim of car thefts, damaged property, a break-in and an armed drug dealer chase through my garden.

The only thing that's ever happened here of any level of crime was a spate of dog-thefts across the county, I'm assuming for fighting. They caught them pretty quickly though.

A pp mentioned Hot Fuzz. I watched that and thought it explained a lot about the village I lived in at the time. I then moved to an isolated hamlet full of crazy people. We get snowed in for days at a time, but despite the crazies, I feel reasonably safe.
However, I also feel safe when visiting relatives in a fairly notorious part of London. Perhaps I’m not easily scared. Not sure why I’m posting, but it’s my day off and I’m bored.

Well go check yourself..!

www.police.uk

I'd say broadly speaking rural villages are safer simply because they are smaller,more isolated and possibly have a greater sense of community. Having said that ,since the advent of the motor car, criminals can and do travel and they know rural areas often have nice houses with nice things in them. They also know a police response will be a lot slower. You could use the safety in numbers argument to say some parts of cities are safer.

Other types of crime may be more prevalent in villages eg white collar crime,,fraud,etc..

PS
Co incidentally only last night i was comparing crime stats for my police area with those of some friends who live in a town with a large rural area round it and bizarrely,their crime stats were much higher...

Rural crime is very under reported.

I think villages are very safe for personal things but theft of machinery and livestock is rife as is arson and damage to property.

I'd never live in a city again (live in a small village of less than 100 houses) - I work in a city and get the daily security report for campus from security and the police - it is shocking reading!

I know several people who moved from nice parts of London to small rural towns "for the children" and are now surprised that (a) the schools aren't as good and certainly aren't as aspirational (b) the public transport isn't as good and (c) the level of drug use, and the easy and unpoliced access to those drugs, is way higher.

Villages are probably safer than big cities.

Our local crimes this year included, someone drove past a car too close and knocked the mirror off. A dodgy man in a white van wandering around the allotments. Nobody knew him, he said he was looking for vegetables for his mother. Somebody (many somebodies), not picking up their dog mess and putting it in the dog bins.

This is all reported in the local village magazine.

(a) the schools aren't as good and certainly aren't as aspirational (b) the public transport isn't as good and (c) the level of drug use, and the easy and unpoliced access to those drugs, is way higher.

(a)Our local school is very good and highly aspirational. They get very good results. (There is nothing for DC to do in the evenings here, except sports clubs, scouts, cadets or dance, so they have time to do homework) . (b) Public transport, is that a thing? Nope everyone drives, teenagers from 17 to 90 year olds, you definitely spend most of your evening driving DC to clubs or friends. (c) don't know about drug use, I don't see it and my DC and their friends have never got into it. Lots of posting on facebook about drinking wine though (mothers).

Harold Shipman was a village doctor...food for thought maybe

Arnold checked our postcode one sexual violence offence. The case is a neighbour in their eighties who has attacked his wife a few times. Surprised no burglaries.

I'm in a small village. There is crime but it's really low. Put it this way, my fully comp car insurance is less than £200 a year here but the same car is quoted 4X as much in the nearest city/big town so the insurance companies would agree with you OP.

Put it this way, my fully comp car insurance is less than £200 a year here but the same car is quoted 4X as much in the nearest city/big town

Insurance companies aren't hugely bothered by crime. The worst it's going to cost is the write-off value of the car, and usually it's a broken window and a radio. Once the car has been stolen I think I am right in saying that the damage the thief causes falls on other sources of money than the car's owner's insurance.

What keeps insurers, or their actuarial modelling software, awake at nights is accidents, especially personal injury accidents. They can easily cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. If you live in a city, you drive in a city. Far more traffic, far more junctions, far more pedestrians, far more cyclists, far more accidents per mile driven.

Personal preference - I found the quiet in the countryside spooky and who would hear me if there was trouble? Police take ages to respond etc ... I'm happy in a small city personally, a compromise

As tenbob and others say, it depends what you mean by safe.

Less crime in villages but as she says ambulances, fire engines and the police can take a very, very long time to arrive. I grew up in a rural area where drinking and driving was tolerated in a way it just wasn't when I moved to a city because "how else are we supposed to get home?" - and the rural attitude remained unchanged when I visited after moving. Teen deaths in traffic accidents and/ or alcohol related accidents seemed really high - I haven't looked up stats but during my rural teens 5 seperate teen acquaintances who died - one walking home (sensibly) on an unlit one lane country road drunk (not sensibly), two killed as passengers in a car driven by a teen who'd been drinking (and survived) and two who'd been drinking and attempted sporty high jinks late at night and fell to their deaths.

Horrible.

I worry a lot about when my own rural teens - and more so their friends - have their own motor transportation...

ReflectentMonatomism I wonder whether the sort of accidents that happen in cities are more likely to write off cars than be fatal due to low speeds and public transport or taxis available to the intoxicated.

Last January, there were two assaults on passing strangers in a dozy village nearby. In one, a driver was distracted and had items taken from his car, in another a runner? was mugged. Apparently there has been a spike of burglaries.

My suburb mainly has publicity about car/ shed crime. People tend to have modern, desirable cars.

There are some ropey areas near the centre of the city where there is a lot of anti social/ drug/ alcohol issues and gang related crime.

Some crimes such as online fraud aren't really geographically connected to the postcode they are attributed to.

I feel safe running around my dopey suburb at night. It's better lit than villages.

Too many variables to really give an answer.

Cities have more people so crime per person will be higher.

If a city has 100,000 people and 1% were murdering rapists, you'd be I'm trouble.
If a village had 200 and 1% were murdering rapists you'd still be at risk but much less so.

My dear if villages is being far from emergency services. I live 30minutes away from nearest hospital, if I had a heart attack I might be in trouble.
Same as fire. House went up a few months ago, it took the fire brigade 45minutes to get out to it, by which time it'd had been almost razed to the ground. No one was hurt but all their possessions were destroyed.

I’m not sure. We’ve got no pavements or street lights. You take your life in your hands if you want to walk anywhere. There’s not really anywhere for the kids to bike or scoot safely, no parks or paved paths. There is A LOT of drink driving, it’s far less socially unacceptable than you’d expect. Teens take lots of drugs and therefore risks as there’s very little else for them to do. I guess it depends on what aspects of safety you are thinking about

Statistically I live in a very safe area, I’m from South london and always felt safe and frequently used the night bus where as here even in the day when I take the dog out across the fields I’m convinced every tree when rustling in the wind is housing a murderer.

Live in a rural village now

Obviously anecdotes mean nothing but my best friend lives in a very nice little village. They’ve had burglaries, car theft, illegal raves and drug busts. Apparently it’s the townsfolk coming into the village because they know they’ll get a good payoff from the wealth there.

I live in a fairly rough town and I feel safer here than I do in my friend’s village. Mainly because over there, nobody would hear me scream.

I've lived in a village for 30 years and can't remember a rape or murder. (hope that wasn't tempting fate).There is however petty crime (usually when a certain pair of individuals are released from prison until they're caught again) which mostly consists of theft from sheds/garages/outbuildings. There is also a small minority who think that anti-social behaviour is OK but it is usually stamped in pretty quickly by the local police - mainly because everyone knows who they are so report it! There are drug dealers - but they are everywhere now I think. But on the whole it is a relatively safe place to live - although I don't tend to walk anywhere on my own late at night as my parents came from a city and put the fear of god into me as a child about the things that could happen!