Ask 100 different people how safe they feel living in their communities, and you will get 100 different answers. Safety is subjective in many ways. However, when you consider dozens of different factors that that all point to different aspects of safety, you will get a more objective answer.
WalletHub recently published its Safest Cities list, ranking major metropolitan areas across the United States across 44 key safety factors. The 150 most populous cities in the U.S. were compared, along with the two most populous cities in each state, equaling a total of 182 cities.
Three categories of factors were considered: home and community safety, natural disaster risk, and financial safety. Individual factors in these categories include thefts per capita, assaults per capita, EMTs per capita, traffic and pedestrian fatalities per capita, flood risk, hail risk, unemployment rate, debt-to-income ratio, and more.
Let’s take a look at the findings.
2 Indiana Cities Made The List
Fort Wayne, Indiana’s second largest city, ranked #51 out of 182. Indianapolis, our largest city and state capital, ranked #135 out of 182 cities.
The Safest State Capitals
WalletHub also published an article ranking U.S. state capitals in terms of safety. Indianapolis was ranked #37, coming in behind Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and right above Lansing, Michigan.
The safest state capitals list considered many of the same factors as the safest cities list.
Indianapolis shined particularly bright in one key factor, the lowest percentage of state-local and federal government employees, coming in #2.
But Indianapolis came in #48 when it comes to highest premature death rate and #46 for worst health conditions.
While these rankings are certainly interesting, what is worthy of more discussion is how to improve person and public safety. As individuals, we can do a lot to protect ourselves and our families.