USA's safest cities? Surprise: SF is not one of them (Pelosi's district)

SFGate.com ^ | 10/29/09 | Anna Marie Hibble

[NormsRevenge]

Forbes Magazine, famed for its exhaustive lists, has a new one: America's safest cities. The unusual thing about this list is that the list-makers used more than just violent crime statistics to assess the relative safety. Also among the data collected are the number of workplace fatalities, deaths by traffic, and deaths by natural disaster.

San Francisco ranks #25 in the list of 40 major metropolis regions,behind New York (#8), Detroit (#12), Chicago (#15), and Los Angeles (#19).

[NormsRevenge]

I was reading in my ol’ hometown paper online about local stuff, they have drive-bys there now or did..

It used to be 2 hours out of the Metro area, now it’s almost a suburb.. too bad.

[NormsRevenge]

a lot less drive-bys in the south bay, just avoid the low rider mini-cars zipping in and out of traffic.. it’s a crazy area,, and people. just got to be on your toes. :-]

[Darth Reardon]

I’m thinking that means seventh place for that category, not seven events.

[The Truth Will Make You Free]

Very likely an inaccurate and meaningless methodology. The rankings for crime, workplace fatalities, traffic deaths, and natural disaster risks are simply added. That assumes that 1) each of these 4 areas has equal weighting, and 2) the hazard is an area decreases proportionally with ranking.

I think most people would agree that deaths from all 4 areas combined per 100k population would be more meaningful.

But even this would be of little value, since rates can vary dramatically within areas of city. Better would be a map of death rates by the predominant ethnic makeup of a city, zip code, or annual income per family.

And even better would be some type of website where a user could put in their own methodology to see how the rankings turn out. Oh, but then we wouldn't be TOLD what to think.