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).

In a village you’re more likely to drop dead of a stroke or heart attack or any condition that needs an ambulance as it often takes a lot longer for ambulances to get to you. So yes Villages are definitely more dangerous as you will die when if you lived in a town or city you wouldn’t.

In a village you’re more likely to drop dead of a stroke or heart attack or any condition that needs an ambulance as it often takes a lot longer for ambulances to get to you. So yes Villages are definitely more dangerous as you will die when if you lived in a town or city you wouldn’t

That’s a bit of a tenuous stat. Surely it depends on the severity of the stroke/heart attack etc and the village/city etc.

All the small villages around here have defibs which is great but importantly are on great transport links; which are rarely busy.

My village is 7 mins from the hospital and there's an ambulance station 50m from my house, so you're talking bollocks.

You can look up the police crime statistics per post code if you live in the UK for reported crimes

I used to live somewhere with a voluntary first responder service in a car that covered a certain area, that did not include the motor way. They published their statistics too.

I live in a nice small city which until about 10 years ago was very safe. People would leave their front door open. The local newspaper headline would be something cute about a primary school.

Recently crime has rocketed, burglaries, drugs etc. We have many homeless people now, whereas in the past it was unheard of. Our essential services have terrible problems and seem to be struggling to recruit good people. House prices have also rocketed.

Country roads are very dangerous and most villages are in country roads so I would worry about accidents in cars. Also teens driving (city teens tend not to).
I’d probably feel vulnerable to burglary in a village too.
In my experience Saturday night violence is worst in towns not cities.
When I lived in London my only personal experience I’d crime was pickpocketing and bags nicked from pubs. Really annoying but didn’t make me feel “unsafe” as you never knew it had happened till after.

that should be 5 years ago.

It was a nice safe city until 5 years ago.

I grew up in a small village without a public bus service to the town I went to school in. My parents wouldn't drive me because they wanted a drink in the evening.

It sadly is not amazing that lots of men will drive 13 year old girls home from parties if they pressure them into blow jobs or sex to make it worth their while. I think of that as a direct consequence of living in an isolated village.

Have lived in big city, large town and several villages. Have had burglar alarms in all my properties. Most crime is opportunistic, so I always feel opportunities for criminals should've reduced wherever you live.
I'd never 'leave my door unlocked' wherever I lived.

Depends on the village, there were four burglaries in my street in the first five months of me moving to my current village and the Co-op has been robbed at knife point twice. The ATM up the road was dug out and raided (not replaced, the garage doesn't want the risk, so 7 miles to the nearest ATM now), the parking is terrible, dog poo all over the pavements, driving through the village is bad and a lot of lads on motorbikes screaming up and down the high street, drug dealing on the village green.

No idea what towns are like, never lived in one, but villages.....nothing that safe about them!

I live in a village,and have lived in several other villages over the years,and have always felt safe. I wouldn't like to live in a big town or city,but not because of maybe feeling less safe, but because I don't like masses of people everywhere, and loads of traffic congestion and loads of shops etc.

There have been a few house break ins in this village, mostly the bigger expensive properties, and not my tiny old place..

Jokingly,the most awful crime here years ago, was that someone stole a dogs ceramic water bowl from outside the village shop, and everyone was very upset,, but then five days later,it was returned in its correct place, probably in the middle of the night..ha ha,

St Mary Mead?
Carsely?
Can’t think of any more right now, but they both are good examples of villages that are well fucking dodgy

Villages always make me think of Deliverance or Texas Chainsaw. Never feel safe in the countryside at night. But that's me - I like the (probably false) sense of security of having people near me.

Imo what causes crime is poverty so if you're in a deprived area whether village, town or city you're more at risk.

There are certain town centres where that comes to an unholy head whereby you have an area with lots of pubs etc ie opportunities to get pissed or high, lots of deprivation so a fuckit attitude and they're small so it's concentrated. At least in cities this is more spread out.

In villages a lot of petty crime is the result of boredom.

I have lived in a village for 12 years, a northern town for 20 years and in and around London for about 20 years.

Northern town - burgled a couple of times, and flashed.

Village- offered drugs first day we moved in, window caved in.
Guy we knew bit his sisters fingers off.
Bank robbery including holding bank managers wife and kids at gun point.
Joy riders who then went into kill themselves when they crashed.
Robbery at local business

Around London- nothing

Crikey Oliversmum Happy Valley?

We live in rural Cumbria, years ago you'd be correct about ambulance weighting times being half an hour or more but now, although still above average they are much less as ambulances don't come from the ambulance station but are dotted around the county.
Crime is low, every month the police report in the parish magazine has 1 or 2 road accidents (live near a trunk road) and a report of youths sitting in the bus shelter, there never damaged said shelter just sit in it.

Villages also vary massively 1 persons village is the next person's small town e.g. the towns around here have a population os low 4 or 5 thousand where as my MIL lives in a village of 6500 and with more amenities in another part of the country so their village life compares with our town life, you aren't looking at the same thing

Ps Lancaster is not a village despite cherry trees

onlyjoined. How are those trees? That headline was many years ago, at least 25, so they're either thriving or have been cut down to make room for cars.

I think crime is more likely to have a personal connection in areas where everyone knows everyone, and so we feel safer because we like to think no one we know is a criminal.

In the sleepy rural town I grew up near, a woman was murdered last year by her ex husband. It was barely reported. There's a review going on of the police's actions relating to the case which suggests to me they knew he was a threat and had failed to protect her from him.

The other thing about the area I grew up in was a very high rate of teenagers getting themselves killed driving recklessly on bendy rural roads late at night, as a consequence of a lack of public transport combined with standard teenage recklessness and a general local normalisation of driving well over the speed limit because the police were never around to see it.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that the dangers are just different but not nonexistent.

Depends on the village!

Members of my extended family moved out of a small village that was terrorised* by a local crim family, who know how to out-fox the Police all while claiming more different benefits and free council support than the rest of the village put together!

*Every other village household burgled some multiple times, got into a war with a local traveller clan who descended on the village for a brawl with them, incest (half-brother sister who were also first cousins had a baby).

Yes, you have to spell it out because people are quite rightly not accepting a face value simplistic view of ‘safe’
For example;
Perception and reality of ‘safe’ are different. Is B’ham statistically highe risk or do people feel fear due to other factors?
People do consider many safety factors. I consider narrow windy country roads without pavements unsafe for pedestrians and cyclists , and frequently drivers. Lack of public transport means that many inexperienced teens as well as drunks take to the roads. Seen this happen a lot, with tragic results, in my family’s village.

The point about violence to women and children being mostly by people they know is pertinent. And in a village it can take a long time for police or ambulance to arrive. My family are about 10 miles from either.

I live in a gritty area of S London within walking distance of two fatal stabbings this year but do not feel personally at risk of this sort of activity at all, and the stats bear that out. (Middle aged white women are not the victims of gang related stabbings). I feel a bit spooked when staying alone in my parents house. But I am not at any real risk at all.

Google will tell you the crime stats, here people will talk about how they feel.

OP, if you feel weirded out by someone in a bike in a balaclava and sunglasses, and are quite snippy to people in this thread who made perfectly reasonable responses to your OP and following posts, you might be feeling a level of sensitivity / anxiety that follows you wherever you live.

Austerity is biting and having an effect everywhere. Different ways in different environments. Living in a community where you know people helps, whether rural or urban, I think.

Rural crime does exist - it mainly consists of stealing farm machinery and fuel oil. Oh - and a few barns with weed growing! But on the whole people all know each other so walking about in the dark or daytime you are most likely to get waylaid for a chat rather than a mugging!

I live in a semi rural village in Scotland, there has been only one murder in my lifetime and it was a huge deal. People were devastated. Many awful things happen in cities you can get desensitized. It wouldnt let it stop me living there though. I would love to live in London or Edinburgh.