Safe Cities: Scientists Discover Rural Regions are More Dangerous

How safe are cities? They may be more benign than you once thought. Scientists have discovered that the risk of death from injuries is less on average in urban communities in comparison to suburban and rural counties across the U.S.

In order to find out how injuries and deaths related to locations, the researchers examined county-level data on all injury deaths across the U.S. from 1999 to 2006, excluding the deaths from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They found that the top three causes of death were motor vehicle collisions, firearms and poisonings. Yet more surprising was the finding that urban areas appeared to be safer than rural areas.

That's not to say that there aren't risks in urban areas. They found that overall homicide rates were higher in urban areas, for example. Yet suicide rates seemed to increase with rurality, though it was only statistically significant for the two youngest age groups. The biggest difference seemed to be in unintentional-injury deaths, which greatly increased in nonurban areas.

"Perceptions have long existed that cities were innately more dangerous than areas outside of cities, but our study shows this is not the case," said Sage R. Myers, the lead author of the new study, in a news release. "These findings may lead people who are considering leaving cities for non-urban areas due to safety concerns to reexamine their motivations for moving. And we hope the findings could also lead us to reevaluate our rural health care system and more appropriately equip it to both prevent and treat health threats that actually exist."

In fact, the researchers found that the risk of injury-related death was about 20 percent lower in urban areas than in the most rural areas of the country. Motor vehicle crashes seemed to account for most of these unintentional deaths, and rural areas experienced motor vehicle injury-related death rates that were twice that of the next leading injury mechanism.

"We think our work serves as a reminder that injury is an important health issue for Americans, wherever they live," said Brendan G. Carr, the senior study author, in a news release. "Our findings can inform both targeted prevention efforts and strategic efforts to improve trauma care in the U.S."

The researchers hope that their findings will help officials tackle current problems with accidental deaths. In addition, the new research shows that, despite the common view, cities aren't as dangerous as we may have once thought.

The findings are published in the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.