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Comment by _huayra_ | Hacker News Reader

Ah I should be more specific: urban areas in those countries. The level of petty crime in any major city in the US is far higher than any city in those countries I mentioned.

In non-urban areas in the US things are better for sure, but you still have to deal with other things like having complete asshole neighbors that you really can't do anything about because small quality of life crimes like partying every night with loud music is not a crime.

If you move to rural areas this goes down even further, but then you give up a lot of amenities.

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I really doubt that. If we focus in particular on bike theft (one of the examples above), some webpage says that Norway had 60k bike thefts in 2004, 20k of which was reported to the police[1]. This is out of a population of 4.5 million. Some other page says that in New York City, there are 75k bikes stolen per year with 15k reported to the police[2]. This is out of a population of 8.4 million.

So all of Norway (rural and urban areas together) had a higher per-capita rate of bike theft than New York City (which is all urban).

[1] http://www.sykkeltyveri.no/bicycle_theft.html [2] https://www.bicyclehabitat.com/articles/security-pg80.htm

Now to make things interesting, want to adjust this for per capita bike ownership or usage? Otherwise this is could just be picking places favorable to the point you want to make?

Yeah I think this is indeed skewed. Per capita bike theft is gonna be higher if those "capita" own more bikes!

This is a really awfully broad generalization. Crime in SF, NY, Chicago, Boston, LA or Houston are all vastly different situations. Even with shootings up a ton this past year, NYC is still safer per capita than places like Savannah. SF seems to have gotten very out of control, though. Fwiw, I would never leave my car unlocked anywhere, but I also wouldn't feel weird about leaving a bag out. And there is a ton of pick pocketing and petty theft in places like Barcelona, Lisbon, Rome and Paris. Big cities require some attentiveness.

> Big cities require some attentiveness.

The size of the city isn't the issue here. There is definately a correlation between size and crime, but that's not the real issue - what it is I don't know though.

I live in a mid-sized European capital (bigger than Lisbon), and it's one of the safest places I've ever lived. I could probably leave my car running, with an expensive camera on the dash, while going to get a coffee, and everything would still be there when I get back.

Compare this to some Italian cities I've been to - which are smaller - where I feel lucky all four wheels are still there when getting back (locking wheel nuts are easy to break btw). I lived in Rome for a while and if you left something that even looked like it could contain valuables on show, you'd come back to a broken window.

I dunno. Staying in an Airbnb in Seoul, I woke at ~1am to someone banging on my door and yelling for about five minutes. Pretty sure if it weren't locked, I'd be in some sort of trouble.

From another angle, I've been to a restaurant in a central part of Seoul where the owner kept his cash in a wooden box with no lock by the entrance. Pretty sure anyone could have grabbed that box and ran out the door, especially when the owner is in the back preparing the food.

Just for the record, this is happening in sleepy suburban areas also, like Palo Alto. People report CC thefts regularly on NextDoor, and urge neighbors to retrofit their Priuses so they don't fall prey as well.

Locked bikes are stolen in broad daylight in front of grocery stores and at schools. It's probably not as bad as SF, but it is still an issue in the suburbs.

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