Safest feeling place you’ve been to/lived in?

[Howcoldjesus]

I found the thread on here about the places people have found unsafe very interesting.
Where are the places you’ve visited/lived that have felt the safest?
I live in Portugal at the moment and feel v safe in most areas. I also felt safe staying in New South Wales in Australia and Cornwall and Abersoch

Scottish Highlands. Where I currently live, we don't lock our house doors or our car outside the house. Sheds in garden don't even have locks. Postie can leave parcels on doorstep, or opens door and puts it inside for us. It is very isolated, but there are a few neighbours houses within walking distance. I feel very safe here. I don't have any fear of humans, my worries if I had any, concern falling trees, or flooded road (there is only one road), or extreme winter weather and power cuts. There are no dangerous livestock or wild animals around. A few sheep, deer and cattle.

Madrid is the only place I've been mugged!

My brother lives in Oban and doesn't lock his door!

Liverpool in my experience did not feel safe. Some would take advantage of you more like. And rob you. Any bike left anywhere would have it's saddle, lights, anything of value robbed within minutes. Doors had to be locked. Local people looked after their own, strangers not so much. It is a superficial place, on the outside it seems jolly, friendly, but deeper down it is insular, and very protective of it's own. Which is nice for the locals I guess. Obviously not all Liverpudlians are like that.

Japan, hands down. You can go out at night as a female and you're completely safe.

TBH I haven't felt unsafe anywhere I have lived except when I was a student during the Yorkshire Ripper era.

The only place I felt unsafe on holiday was in New Orleans. I have felt safe on other holidays, and felt extremely safe in Vienna and Hong Kong.

Safest place to visit Japan ,
safest place to live where I live now in U.K. . The local news groups are abuzz with problems of getting overhanging hedges on pavements cut back and a parrot was spotted in someone's garden.

least safe place I've lived south east London in the 80s ,everyone got mugged or burglarised or beaten up. Very chi chi now though with tai chi in the park and expensive coffee.

least safe place I've visited without a doubt is Karachi . Most threatening unpleasant place I've been to in a country mile and I visited Times Square in the 80s.

Carmarthen Swansea

Venice. I loved walking around there at night to get back to the hotel. Shouldn’t really have felt safe given the alleys and dark but it did.

London

9 million people, I've gone out every day in last 7 years and seen one person smoking crack on the Tube

Super safe city 🤷‍♀️

Japan felt very safe indeed - Tokyo and various towns in Ibaraki where I worked. But I've felt safe everywhere I've lived, even northern towns with "rough" reputations and cities like Manchester and London. Male privilege, perhaps?

Literally the only place I've ever been a victim of crime was a field in rural Pembrokeshire.

Agree with those saying that people’s individual definition of ‘feeling safe’ varies wildly. Some people on here pathologise perfectly ordinary, very low-risk things like walking by yourself in the country, and behave as if London is Sodom and Gomorrah.

I lived very happily in various sketchy pre-gentrification bits of London, and used to walk solo at all hours of the day and night when we lived in a village. I also lived by myself over winter on an island with no other inhabitants which was often cut off for weeks by bad weather, and have travelled around India on trains. (I also spent a year living in a house where two peoole had died in a suicide pact the year before, which seems to make some posters on here very uneasy.)

I think that the place that comes to mind where I felt most unsafe was Durban about 18 years ago, because of the prevalence of carjacking meaning no one stopped at red lights etc and how often there was apparently motiveless violence, like people being shot dead during home burglaries.

I agree with the London ones. I said to my mum, who moved out of London in her 40's, that I was having to get a night bus in the early hours and she said 'Oh god, please be careful!' - in reality I couldn't get a seat! I feel safest where there are lots of people, and would be so scared walking home from a village pub in the dark!

I also felt very safe when, without my partner, I went to Dubai with my 5 year old. There is something comforting about visiting a country with zero crime tolerance (as a tourist!).

Bath felt very very safe

I felt incredibly safe in Singapore and Fuerteventura in particular, but I feel safer anywhere I can think of than I do in south London. I would happily walk around the backstreets of Luxor late at night on my own, but I wouldn't walk to the local shops down my road here after dark.

I used to live in Switzerland (wish I still did) and I felt so safe. It’s got to be one of the least (dare I say it) chavvy countries in the world. I didn’t feel particularly safe in the suburbs of Australia with its wide, isolated roads and empty suburban train stations. Creepy vibes.

York. I went to uni there and never felt unsafe, even walking alone in the middle of the night.

We used to mainly go out drinking midweek though, I’m not sure I’d have felt the same on a Saturday night.

14 minutes 🤣

Cyprus, Calgary (albeit this was over 30 years ago) and Witney in Oxfordshire.

If I can say when people mention Scandinavia- I know Sweden and Denmark pretty well(lived there for 20 months) and it's a very ordered society- public disorder and anti social behaviour is really frowned on and on the whole the indigenous population are well looked after-so there is less signs of poverty or desperation, certainly than the UK. - that's not to say it doesn't exist , it does, but my experience is they would rather live in a state provided2 bed flat and eat pot noodles and watch TV than go out causing menace or crime. There are also far less really grim central areas and far more mixed age people out in an evening in the cities and far more police presence. The only occasions I have seen hassle have been in the odd areas where there is more non white, non EU immigration and that's probably because they aren't entitled to the safety net in many cases and you tend to not go to those areas unless you have reason to OR a bit of occasional drunken ness. I've rarely spied any homelessness either.

This is what high tax can get you though and it takes a different mindset too. Even most older people accept that's the way it is and helps their younger relatives and they get much better pensions because of it.

Liverpool.

Went to uni there. had an evening job at a bar in the city centre and lived just outside it. I’d walk through the centre to get home at all hours and never felt unsafe.

It wasn’t long before I got on first name terms with the security on many of the bars I passed and made some walking home pals. I always felt there would be someone there to help if needed.

It’s not the kind of place where people would watch you come to harm and walk on by.

@willWillSmithsmith Denmark and Sweden certainly didn't seem to be very chavvy either. My H described it as Waitrose on acid

My only thing about Switzerland (and I've been to lots of it with work) is it's extortionate and often quite dull - great if you ski I guess.

Totally agree with this (as another Londoner). I like that there's always a kebab shop or something open if I did feel I needed to get off the street. In the country, OTOH, when it's totally dark and there's not a soul about... [shudder]
Some towns and cities feel more pleasant than others. Ljubljana is wonderfully relaxed and friendly and easy IME, as is Berlin in spite of it being so big. Marrakech is quite seedy, OTOH, and in a smallish southern French town some years ago a local scurried past me and my friends muttering the equivalent of 'you're not from round here you [insert word none of us caught but which was almost certainly an insult]'

Channel Islands .. and many parts of Northern Europe (mostly just because usually it's civilised and not threatening/ and certainly not as much thuggish mentality. Never felt particularly unsafe in most of U.K. but more a feeling of being threatened mostly by thuggish people either boozed up or nasty road rage types, all the the "what you f-ing looking at" horrible aggressive people that U.K. does well at producing!

US is variable but I cant help the feeling of being on edge looking out for some crazed gunman on the loose, yet north of the border in Canada is night and day and I have never felt unsafe there.

Singapore and Dubai : very safe, yet also feel slightly on edge that I might unknowingly break a rule!

Same here.

I feel pretty safe when in Jersey - difficult for criminals to get away and you know Bergerac is there to sort things out (showing my age there)

German cities are ok but you do get a lot of people wandering around asking for money etc to an extent that you just don't get in the UK, even with chuggers.

I live in a "naice" town but would avoid the centre on a Friday or Saturday night. That probably applies to most places though. Otherwise I think UK towns and cities are safer than you think.