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Comment by vinbreau | Hacker News Reader

Running requires a safe neighborhood. I've lived in enough bad neighborhoods where my wife would never feel safe running in. When we did move to a better neighborhood and saw runners, my wife was surprised. Many poor people do not live in places conducive to running.

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That's such a "US only" statement... along most of Europe from Russia to Spain and from Ireland to southern Greece you can run safely almost anywhere as long as you wear mostly cheap-looking clothes (eg. no $100+ shoes, no iphone on arm-band, no apple watch or rolex, no over-colorful clothes that could be mistaken for pro training gear etc.)... As a woman there would be areas to avoid, but by picking to run through more crowded places and at more daily times it can also be safe enough.

I'd bet the same would apply to most US too if you wouldn't purpusefully dress like a "rich runner"... (or go the other extreme and end up looking like a home robber on the run form the police :P).

Running has much lower safety requirements than walking. Runners are generally not compelling robbery targets because they're harder to stop and they carry fewer valuables.

Women running are at risk for sexual assault, but this is less correlated with "bad neighborhoods".

They are apparently great kidnapping targets, though, after reading this article.

> Running requires a safe neighborhood.

Or access to a treadmill.

;-)

> Running requires a safe neighborhood.

I (a man) feel uncomfortable walking, let alone running, in any neighborhood, safe or not. A man walking/running in a more upper-middle class neighborhood (or manicured gated community) always attracts attention and someone's bound to call the cops on you "just to be on the safe side" :) Safer to whiz by in your car and lift weights in your garage.

As long as you're wearing obvious running clothes, this is not an issue anywhere I've been.

Yeah, as someone who has run late at night in cities and towns all over the US, this definitely doesn’t happen in my experience.

I’ve been stopped/checked out by police while walking with friends late at night in small towns, but running (in running clothes) seems to put one beyond suspicion.

Something's wrong with a society if that is the case. You can't imagine how much this statement shocks me. Not doubting it in any way, just a considerable shock.

This is definitely true. You do not want to be poor and male and running at night when the police come by, or poor and female and running in a truly bad neighborhood. I've spent time in the back of a police cruiser because they thought I was breaking into cars when they saw me jogging at night.

I was interviewed by police because they thought I was trying to steal my own car, as stupid as that may seem, and the only reason for that was because I was wearing a hood at night in a rich neighborhood.

Yeah, same here. I wonder if that's a byproduct of american society where walking anywhere is seen as "weird"?

Like, I can't even fathom a situation where I would be worried about walking somewhere just in case someone calls the police on me. That's crazy.

No. It's a byproduct of a 24hr news cycle and a bunch of rich people who have never actually lived in a rough neighborhood who get spooked at every little thing thinking it might be crime.

What country is that ? As a French person, this is shocking - I can't imagine living in such place.

Anddddd I don’t want to live in the US even if they do make twice as much money.

I think you have to understand that posts like this reflect the attitude of Americans much more than they reflect the USA itself (I grew up in the UK but live in the USA).

More concretely: are there places in big cities in the USA where you should be very cautious walking around at night? Absolutely. But the exact same thing applies in London and Manchester too. Robbery is an issue there too.

To some extent, people in the USA just make a bigger deal out of it. You'll also find that when Americans discuss travel abroad they're also very worried about safety. IMO it's a cultural mentality more than the specific realities of specific places.

I don’t think this is actually true.

I've run in affluent neighborhoods in at least a dozen US cities, walked in too many to bother counting. This isn't something I've experienced anywhere.

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