Is it really true that big cities are safer than small towns?

 

I was writing an article awhile back and ran across some information that surprised me.  Actually, I thought it was just about unbelievable and dismissed it for the purposes of writing my article.  However, the crux of it bothered me and I decided to do a little investigating into it when I had the chance.  The information stated, basically, that a Tennessee Department of Transportation study had found that my small hometown county, Trousdale County, Tennessee, had a much higher injury and death rate by automobile accident than Metropolitan Davidson County (Nashville)!

The TDOT study reflects that Trousdale County has more wrecks and those wrecks more often result in injury and death. This isn’t per capita – this is just a basic number against Davidson County’s basic number. Now I totally understand why Trousdale County consistently remains at the top of the county list for wrecks caused by deer, but in wrecks caused by other humans? If that’s true, why? What makes driving in sparsely populated rural Tennessee more dangerous metropolitan Nashville?  To be fair, I didn’t compare Knoxville or Memphis in these numbers, I was mainly interested in my Middle Tennessee area.  When I dug deeper, there were a couple of studies that supported TDOT’s findings.  These studies seemed to indicate that it was safer to live in a big city than in a small town. Or, I should say the articles written about the studies slanted the findings that way and more than half of those seemed to be saying “OK you small town yokels, lower your carbon footprint and move to the big city where we can take care of you”.  So the study had basically been hijacked by the Greenies who don’t seem to understand that, if all us yokels move to the big city they will starve to death because we won’t be raising their food.  Oh those pesky details.  I finally tracked down the original study, to which most of the articles writers were loath to link to in their articles.  I admit I didn’t read all of it – it’s quite long! But I did get the basic information and it made alot of sense when taken in context and not used to further political agendas  The study had been compiled by emergency room physicians and found that, while urban areas were much more likely to have injuries related to criminal acts, rural areas were a whopping 22% more likely (on average) to have injuries and deaths related to accidents.  This included a much higher injury and death rate due to automobile wrecks.

The study didn’t really take the individual reasons to account, it was more of a numbers based study that seemed to focus on how the accidental injuries and deaths in rural communities could be mitigated by community education primarily through medical personnel.  I think there are some obvious conclusions to draw from though, based on solid numbers and my experience growing up in a small rural town.  First of all, we drive alot more in rural areas.  In Nashville, I can get from Union Street to White Bridge Road via main roads with minimal curves and hills and mostly stop and go traffic.  My danger there is a fender bender or, God Forbid, hitting a pedestrian. Now, when I’m back in Hartsville, I have to drive down winding roads with hairpin curves and no shoulder, over blind hills and then some wonderful straight-a-ways where a person can get up to 80 (not that I ever have) before decelerating to go around that sharp curve with all the crosses and other road side memorials set up to poor souls who didn’t make it and hit that big tree or went down the embankment. See my point?  We use rural roads, unimproved in some instances, just windy and treacherous in others, or maybe iced over or wet.  We drive at higher speeds on highways and secondary roads, and we drive more.  We don’t have bus, train or subway service to rely on.  We also commute.  There’s not alot of work in these small towns which means we have to get up early and leave before dawn, or in fog, and get somewhere on a deadline.  In addition to car accidents, there are just more ways to hurt yourself out here in general.  We have farming accidents, drowning in local rivers, people working on their cars get hurt, etc.  Also, not to demean our local medical services, but it takes longer for first responders to get to us if we do get hurt and then we either have to be life-flighted to a trauma hospital in a large city or take our chances at a small regional hospital that may or may not be equipped to best handle our injuries.

I’m relieved after reading all this because I value my small town upbringing. I’m glad I was faced with some dangerous situations when I was a young man, it taught me common sense and how to handle myself in potentially dangerous situations.  What it boils down to is that we can live anywhere we want, but no matter where we are, we need to use what my Grandmother called our “walking around sense”. If you’re born in a small town but you’re a city girl at heart, you can move.  If you’re born in a big city, but at heart you’re a country boy who wants to raise some cows, you can move on out to the country.  We’re lucky to live in a country that is big and prosperous enough to offer us these opportunities.  In the meantime, be careful out there – but not so careful that you don’t have fun!