12 ms·

I am very spoiled by living in one of the European capitals. It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-

I am very spoiled by living in one of the European capitals. It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-02h. I visit SF at least once a year, and default to my learned habit of walking alone, and later at night. No more.

isaacremuant 4y ago
I never understand why people feel like they can make such generalizing statements as "One of the European capitals". Europe is not a monolith. Different areas also have different problems. It's like the whole talk about "walkable cities" or healthcare. Everything is frame from a US perspective and simplified to an absurd level so that no contextual criticism is possible without descending into weird political tribalism and an apples to oranges comparison between an entire continent and a country.
- bestcoder69 4y ago
  OK then make it apples to apples and compare crime rates in your preferred manner? It’s hard to make the US look good no matter what grouping or aggregation or whatever you choose. There’s a clear difference in policies and their downstream effects (eg poverty rate) between the US and a random European city you select by throwing a dart at a map. Not all, but do a few trials and pretend not to see a pattern. e: Also, sorry, it's ridiculous to say the US looks to Europe too much when discussing policy. This almost never happens, and when it does it's from the left, who has 0 actual influence. Every policy discussion should begin by talking about prior art & what we've observed about the effectiveness of policies as implemented elsewhere. It'll never show causality, but it'll start the discussion off with some possible causal links to explore w/ our own policy experiments!
- aqme28 4y ago
  Because it doesn't matter which European capital. No country in western Europe has a higher homicide rate than the US.
  - drstewart 4y ago
    >which European capital. Kiev, 2020-2022.
    - aqme28 4y ago
      Obvious there are some exceptions, but that's why I said "western europe." Pre-war Kyiv was still much much better than say St. Louis.
    - bestcoder69 4y ago
      USA! USA!
    - komali2 4y ago
      We found an example of a place more violent than most cities in the richest country on earth and possibly in all of human history! It's a city in a country engaged in a hot war!
    - lucideer 4y ago
      I know your comment is tongue-in-cheek but the overall US homicide rate is comparable to the UN casualty count for the Russo-Ukraine war (most of which will be in Donbas, not Kyiv). So I wouldn't be completely certain the rate in Kyiv is necessarily higher. I don't think there's good figures but I'd wager it's actually lower than some US cities.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      Yes, a city torn in war is less safe than SF, I'll give you that! Might as well add Lagos too!
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Chicago has murder rates that eclipse actual wars.
        Grum9 4y ago
        And I hear they have new progressive mayor, close call there almost flew too close to the center https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/04/chicago-mayoral-election-polls-brandon-johnson-paul-vallas https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/04/chicago-mayo...
- francisofascii 4y ago
  > never understand why people feel like they can make such generalizing statements Simply to remain more anonymous.
- petodo 4y ago
  Because it works in general? Even the worst country in Europe [1] (Latvia 4.9 murders/100k pop.) by murder rate is better than US average (6.6/100K) [2] with France 1.1, Germany 0.9, etc. So unless you choose extreme in Europe you are looking for sure at least at 3-5 times lower murder rates in Europe. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-europe-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-eu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
  - User23 4y ago
    As we can see by comparing the county map of the USA that you linked with a demographic map, murder in the USA is overwhelmingly a demographic issue. We can debate the reasons why, but the data itself is readily available and incontrovertible. The changing demographics of Western Europe will prove an interesting new data point for that debate.
    - dan-robertson 4y ago
      I don’t think a picture of a map is incontrovertible? https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ What are the arguments against your position that you think are strongest and why are they so weak that you think they can be considered ‘incontrovertible’?
      - User23 4y ago
        Fair objection. I thought it was obvious that the map was just a visualization and not the incontrovertible data. That would be the data from various high quality reports such as those produced by the UCR[1], BJS[2], NACJD[3], and the MAP[4]. I don't know of any non-straw arguments against my position that demographics are a dominating factor in homicide rates because of the high quality of the homicide data. Note that I say factor and not cause. The causes for these observable patterns are very much under debate. Nevertheless, corpses are hard to ignore. The paperwork almost always gets filed, so the data quality is considerably higher than for underreported crimes such as rape. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/ https://ucr.fbi.gov/ [2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/ https://bjs.ojp.gov/ [3] https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/NACJD/ https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/NACJD/ [4] https://www.murderdata.org/p/offenders.html https://www.murderdata.org/p/offenders.html
- mrtksn 4y ago
  Sure, all generalisations are wrong and it even depends by the neighbourhood but the highest homicide rate in Europe appears to be in Tallinn and it's on par with Seattle. The only very worst places in Europe overlap with the very best in US. San Francisco also appear to be on the better part, way worse than Tallinn still. Even Istanbul, which is a 15M population city in a country with serious economic turmoil and and has huge number of refugees and illegal immigrants from war torn countries, is much batter than most of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...
- _0w8t 4y ago
  Just based on statistics it is very easy to make such generalizations. During the civil war in Lebanon in eighties it was safer there than in modern US.
- glanzwulf 4y ago
  Yep. Us Europeans have a tendency to pretend that "America Bad - Europe Good". And sure, we don't have the gun violence and have healthcare, but we also have our own share of violent crime. And of course it all depends on many factors, but I know for a fact that not all of Paris is safe, or all of Berlin. You have your bad apples everywhere.
  - fortran77 4y ago
    [flagged]
- coldtea 4y ago
  >Europe is not a monolith. Doesn't have to be. Almost all (if not all) European cities have much lower homicide rates. To the tune of multiple times lower.
- itronitron 4y ago
  I feel you, people also make a lot of generalizing statements about the USA, especially Europeans.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > Europe is not a monolith. When it's about homicide rates, it kinda is though. > Different areas also have different problems. It's rarely violence at the level you see in an American city. > It's like the whole talk about "walkable cities" or healthcare. Yeah, I feel it for you, but it's mostly true. With rare exceptions. While in the US it's mostly false, with rare exceptions.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Europe is part of the Asian continent. I think the idea that it’s a continent is eurocentrism. Perhaps you could say it’s a subcontinent of Asia, like India.
  - petodo 4y ago
    No it's not, it's either two continents Europe and Asia or one continent Eurasia (or even more rarely Afro-Eurasia), but certainly not part of Asia, it's like saying North America is part of South America, it can be either North America or both are part of America, but North America is certainly not part of South America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      North America and South America are clearly different landmasses, whereas Europe is a section of a large land mass we call Asia with the exception of the section we call Europe. It’s just part of 1 end of Asia. If Europe is a separate continent, why isn’t the India? The Middle East?
iLoveOncall 4y ago
There are daily stabbings in London. Often by minors.
- pornel 4y ago
  Only in comment threads, not actual London.
  - tim333 4y ago
    Trying to look it up I came across >In 2017-18 there were 145 homicides in London, of which approximately 80 were carried out using a knife. There were an additional 4,793 incidents of "knife crime with injury". which sadly does seem to be more than daily. That said living in central London I don't see any of it.
    - onion2k 4y ago
      That's pretty appalling but don't forget that London is a city of 9 million people. When you have that number of people in a place there will obviously be crime. It could be argued that 145 deaths and 4,793 incidents is quite low.
      - tim333 4y ago
        Though it's way more than it was in London say 20 years ago. I'm not sure why the change really.
- deesep 4y ago
  [flagged]
- rhaway84773 4y ago
  One would think that a comparison with the UK would be a smart one to make considering the media coverage stabbings in the UK receive, and the fact that homicides in the US tend to be conducted using firearms instead. Turns out, shockingly to me at least, that the US also has a much higher deaths due to stabbing rate than the UK. 0.60/100k residents in the US vs 0.08/100k residents in the UK. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-deaths-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-... That’s almost an entire order of magnitude. And on top of that you add the many order of magnitudes greater homicides in the US thanks to firearms.
notamy 4y ago
> It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-02h. A small point about language, in case you or anyone else didn't know: In English, it sounds weird to use "female" as a noun to refer to people. If, in that sentence, you would replace "female"/"females" with a word like "man"/"men," then you probably want to be using "woman"/"women" instead of "females." Using "female" as a noun for people can come off as dehumanising since it's how we refer to ex. animals in various situations. This applies to men too! Use "men" or "boys" or similar instead of "males"! Dehumanising language affects everyone. Not upset / telling you to change immediately / etc., just thought it might be useful to bring up in case (: Edit: Done engaging with this, thanks for the comments all! Don't want to accidentally start a flame war any more than I may already might have. Sorry mods! Some light reading on the topic that might help: "Why is calling women females a bad thing?" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/tvp97b/why_is_calling_women_females_a_bad_thing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/tvp97b/w... "I hate when men call women "females" instead of saying women" https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/u735sl/i_hate_when_men_call_women_females_instead_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/u735sl/i_h... "CMV: Using the word “female” to talk about a woman or girl is not sexist/wrong/inappropriate" https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/hzj5ox/cmv_using_the_word_female_to_talk_about_a_woman/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/hzj5ox/cmv_us... "When did calling females, female become offensive?" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/re0dc0/when_did_calling_females_female_become_offensive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/re0dc0/w... "What’s the deal with calling women “females?”" https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/xa3jwp/whats_the_deal_with_calling_women_females/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/xa3jwp/whats_the_deal_...
- drstewart 4y ago
  > In English, it sounds weird to use "female" as a noun to refer to people. By "it sounds weird" you actually mean "in the past few years there's been a movement to hyperfocus on this small language quirk that nobody really cared about in the past". Just so we're clear.
  - lph 4y ago
lucideer 4y ago
I live in "one of the European capitals". It is super safe here, but there are still stabbings. The crime-rate is also enormously variable between European cities. > No more. Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. If this were a comparative articles on SF crime-rates you might have a good point, but it isn't. And I say this having had a shooting happen on the street outside my hotel room the last time I stayed in SF - one event isn't a pattern (though in fairness if you look at comparative firearm incidents between US & European cities you're a bit more likely to see obvious disparities).
- User23 4y ago
  > Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. You only have to be wrong about getting murdered once.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. It's doesn't need to be "a single event" that happened to the parent. Many individual observations, talks with residents, learning what they consider "normal" and "acceptable" baseline are also very possible to scare someone used in a safer city off for life. Then there are also the actual stats.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    I was just addressing that their comment seemed to be reacting to "a single event", rather than to review of actual stats (which is, by contrast, a good & rational approach).
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  > Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#description https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des... But changing your habits while in a city in the top 2% for crime might be.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
supergirl 4y ago
stabbing is quite common in some big european cities. that’s because guns are hard to find
- onion2k 4y ago
  stabbing is quite common in some big european cities London is the European (well, kind of) city that most people cite as being bad for knife crime. It's still rare enough that a stabbing will make the national news though. For a basic comparison, in 2022 there were 710 murders in the UK. 282 were stabbings. In the US there were 26,031 murders (a little more than 20,000 using guns), which is 36 times more, while the US has a population that's only 5 times that of the UK.
hestefisk 4y ago
I always thought SF was relatively safer compared to other U.S. cities, eg LA?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 4y ago
  While there are obviously crime stats that give crime rates for whatever somewhat arbitrary political boundary defines a city, they can tell a misleading story. LA covers a lot of different types of areas. SF does to some degree as well (and a lot of visitors are most familiar with area around the Moscone which is at least near somewhat sketchy areas). But this is really true in general. I consider Boston a pretty safe city. But there are absolutely areas that I wouldn't be walking around late at night.
moremetadata 4y ago
[dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Mizoguchi 4y ago
Somatic Marker Hypothesis The somatic marker hypothesis (Bechara and Damasio, 2005; Damasio et al., 1991) highlights the importance of emotions in decision making. The hypothesis postulates that reasoned decision making is influenced by biasing signals (somatic markers) arising from changes in the body periphery. First triggered as a reaction to experienced feedback (e.g., increased heart rate or visceral responses), the somatic reactions are assumed to be reactivated in similar decision situations. It is argued that there are primary and secondary inductions of emotional responses. The primary induction can be understood as innate or learned affective responses arising from a confrontation with pleasurable or aversive stimuli. Secondary inducers comprise affective responses induced by the recall of past events or anticipation of future states.
UncleMeat 4y ago
Many years ago my dad worked for a british company. Some of his coworkers were traveling to DC for business and staying in a very nice hotel. They asked my dad if they should buy a gun to be safe in DC. He was floored. No. Jesus Christ. Violence exists. You can compare risk between places and activities. But decisions should be based on data, not headlines and hunches.
- devoutsalsa 4y ago
  I used to live in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, an area full of homeless people, drug dealers, and probably other things. I hosted a foreign woman via couchsurfing.org and she asked if my neighborhood was safe. I told her she should be fine as long as she didn't bother anyone and didn't stay out too late. She then corrected herself and said she wasn't worried about the criminals. She was worried about being shot by the police.
  - danrocks 4y ago
    [dead]
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    I know we like to dunk on the police but that’s just incredibly clueless.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  The ridiculous part of that story is the expectation that they could just buy a gun and walk around with it in DC. Concealed carrying is a viable option but not something you can do after you simply walk off a plane. Also, walking around and taking care of yourself is just not in the realm of known data. You should consider the known data, sure, but don’t ignore your instincts on the ground. That is insane.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Obviously buying a gun wasn't the solution, but at least "many years ago" DC was pretty bad. I was at a company event and the wife of one of our dinner guests was cut and robbed right outside of a downtown business hotel. And absolutely no one thought this was a freak or particularly out-of-the-ordinary event.
pookha 4y ago
I like Europe but you're exaggerating...I got robbed in Amsterdam and could have been stabbed to death in Frankfurt. London felt dicey in certain spots too (turns out it has 95\1000 rate which is 20% higher than the average in the UK)...To anybody traveling through Europe you've got to be aware of your surroundings because it's not always super safe and there can high risk of crime in tourist areas.
- toyg 4y ago
  Lol yeah. The reality is that any metropolis will have dodgy areas. Tokyo is super-safe, but even there you don't really want to look funny at a yakuza bouncer in Ueno at 3am. The question really is whether SF has more dodgy areas than average, and I guess the answer is yes. I've been a couple of times, and it was a long time ago, but some very central areas felt a bit too unsafe even during the day.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Part of the thing with SF is that it's somewhat unusual in that a business traveler attending an event at the Moscone is at more or less ground zero for some of the seedier parts of town: the Tenderloin, Civic Center, generally W/SW of the Moscone. (This probably used to be somewhat true of the Javits in NYC but that whole area of the city has generally gentrified with the Hudson Yards project being the latest big change.)
- Erem 4y ago
  I also came terrifyingly close to becoming a stab victim in Frankfurt. Those blocks around the train station are as hard as any place I've been.
  - pookha 4y ago
    You nailed it. That Irish pub across from the Frankfurt train station isn't a super-safe establishment.
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    Anon goes into daylight. "This German guy looked directly at me, he was probably about to stab me." "Europe is so dangerous omg."
Equiet 4y ago
Lots of comments about relative safety of US vs European cities. Looking at the data, you need to scroll past 9 US cities (all big cities) until you find the first European city (relatively small city you never have a reason to go to) in this crime ranking: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp Europe is definitely safer than the US.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Which 9? I see 5, then Bradford, UK
  - tough 4y ago
    Brexit?
    - klohto 4y ago
      I didn’t realize Brexit meant you change a continent
      - tough 4y ago
        They have always been a non-continental island AFAIK
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      They left the EU, not Europe
- balls187 4y ago
  Aside for the active warzone.
- 0xDEF 4y ago
  The "problematic" parts of Copenhagen and many other European cities are often counted as being part of other smaller suburban municipalities/cities that are too small to appear on such lists. Nation-wide statistics show that Europe is definitely much safer than the US. However I would rather compare metropolitan areas than cities.
dang 4y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic or regional flamewar. Of all the things we don't need here, that is one of the easiest to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

isaacremuant 4y ago

I never understand why people feel like they can make such generalizing statements as "One of the European capitals". Europe is not a monolith. Different areas also have different problems. It's like the whole talk about "walkable cities" or healthcare. Everything is frame from a US perspective and simplified to an absurd level so that no contextual criticism is possible without descending into weird political tribalism and an apples to oranges comparison between an entire continent and a country.

bestcoder69 4y ago
OK then make it apples to apples and compare crime rates in your preferred manner? It’s hard to make the US look good no matter what grouping or aggregation or whatever you choose. There’s a clear difference in policies and their downstream effects (eg poverty rate) between the US and a random European city you select by throwing a dart at a map. Not all, but do a few trials and pretend not to see a pattern. e: Also, sorry, it's ridiculous to say the US looks to Europe too much when discussing policy. This almost never happens, and when it does it's from the left, who has 0 actual influence. Every policy discussion should begin by talking about prior art & what we've observed about the effectiveness of policies as implemented elsewhere. It'll never show causality, but it'll start the discussion off with some possible causal links to explore w/ our own policy experiments!
aqme28 4y ago
Because it doesn't matter which European capital. No country in western Europe has a higher homicide rate than the US.
- drstewart 4y ago
  >which European capital. Kiev, 2020-2022.
  - aqme28 4y ago
    Obvious there are some exceptions, but that's why I said "western europe." Pre-war Kyiv was still much much better than say St. Louis.
  - bestcoder69 4y ago
    USA! USA!
  - komali2 4y ago
    We found an example of a place more violent than most cities in the richest country on earth and possibly in all of human history! It's a city in a country engaged in a hot war!
  - lucideer 4y ago
    I know your comment is tongue-in-cheek but the overall US homicide rate is comparable to the UN casualty count for the Russo-Ukraine war (most of which will be in Donbas, not Kyiv). So I wouldn't be completely certain the rate in Kyiv is necessarily higher. I don't think there's good figures but I'd wager it's actually lower than some US cities.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Yes, a city torn in war is less safe than SF, I'll give you that! Might as well add Lagos too!
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Chicago has murder rates that eclipse actual wars.
      - Grum9 4y ago
        And I hear they have new progressive mayor, close call there almost flew too close to the center https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/04/chicago-mayoral-election-polls-brandon-johnson-paul-vallas https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/04/chicago-mayo...
francisofascii 4y ago
> never understand why people feel like they can make such generalizing statements Simply to remain more anonymous.
petodo 4y ago
Because it works in general? Even the worst country in Europe [1] (Latvia 4.9 murders/100k pop.) by murder rate is better than US average (6.6/100K) [2] with France 1.1, Germany 0.9, etc. So unless you choose extreme in Europe you are looking for sure at least at 3-5 times lower murder rates in Europe. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-europe-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-eu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
- User23 4y ago
  As we can see by comparing the county map of the USA that you linked with a demographic map, murder in the USA is overwhelmingly a demographic issue. We can debate the reasons why, but the data itself is readily available and incontrovertible. The changing demographics of Western Europe will prove an interesting new data point for that debate.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    I don’t think a picture of a map is incontrovertible? https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ What are the arguments against your position that you think are strongest and why are they so weak that you think they can be considered ‘incontrovertible’?
    - User23 4y ago
      Fair objection. I thought it was obvious that the map was just a visualization and not the incontrovertible data. That would be the data from various high quality reports such as those produced by the UCR[1], BJS[2], NACJD[3], and the MAP[4]. I don't know of any non-straw arguments against my position that demographics are a dominating factor in homicide rates because of the high quality of the homicide data. Note that I say factor and not cause. The causes for these observable patterns are very much under debate. Nevertheless, corpses are hard to ignore. The paperwork almost always gets filed, so the data quality is considerably higher than for underreported crimes such as rape. [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/ https://ucr.fbi.gov/ [2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/ https://bjs.ojp.gov/ [3] https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/NACJD/ https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/NACJD/ [4] https://www.murderdata.org/p/offenders.html https://www.murderdata.org/p/offenders.html
mrtksn 4y ago
Sure, all generalisations are wrong and it even depends by the neighbourhood but the highest homicide rate in Europe appears to be in Tallinn and it's on par with Seattle. The only very worst places in Europe overlap with the very best in US. San Francisco also appear to be on the better part, way worse than Tallinn still. Even Istanbul, which is a 15M population city in a country with serious economic turmoil and and has huge number of refugees and illegal immigrants from war torn countries, is much batter than most of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...
_0w8t 4y ago
Just based on statistics it is very easy to make such generalizations. During the civil war in Lebanon in eighties it was safer there than in modern US.
glanzwulf 4y ago
Yep. Us Europeans have a tendency to pretend that "America Bad - Europe Good". And sure, we don't have the gun violence and have healthcare, but we also have our own share of violent crime. And of course it all depends on many factors, but I know for a fact that not all of Paris is safe, or all of Berlin. You have your bad apples everywhere.
- fortran77 4y ago
  [flagged]
coldtea 4y ago
>Europe is not a monolith. Doesn't have to be. Almost all (if not all) European cities have much lower homicide rates. To the tune of multiple times lower.
itronitron 4y ago
I feel you, people also make a lot of generalizing statements about the USA, especially Europeans.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> Europe is not a monolith. When it's about homicide rates, it kinda is though. > Different areas also have different problems. It's rarely violence at the level you see in an American city. > It's like the whole talk about "walkable cities" or healthcare. Yeah, I feel it for you, but it's mostly true. With rare exceptions. While in the US it's mostly false, with rare exceptions.
nonethewiser 4y ago
Europe is part of the Asian continent. I think the idea that it’s a continent is eurocentrism. Perhaps you could say it’s a subcontinent of Asia, like India.
- petodo 4y ago
  No it's not, it's either two continents Europe and Asia or one continent Eurasia (or even more rarely Afro-Eurasia), but certainly not part of Asia, it's like saying North America is part of South America, it can be either North America or both are part of America, but North America is certainly not part of South America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    North America and South America are clearly different landmasses, whereas Europe is a section of a large land mass we call Asia with the exception of the section we call Europe. It’s just part of 1 end of Asia. If Europe is a separate continent, why isn’t the India? The Middle East?

iLoveOncall 4y ago

There are daily stabbings in London. Often by minors.

pornel 4y ago
Only in comment threads, not actual London.
- tim333 4y ago
  Trying to look it up I came across >In 2017-18 there were 145 homicides in London, of which approximately 80 were carried out using a knife. There were an additional 4,793 incidents of "knife crime with injury". which sadly does seem to be more than daily. That said living in central London I don't see any of it.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    That's pretty appalling but don't forget that London is a city of 9 million people. When you have that number of people in a place there will obviously be crime. It could be argued that 145 deaths and 4,793 incidents is quite low.
    - tim333 4y ago
      Though it's way more than it was in London say 20 years ago. I'm not sure why the change really.
deesep 4y ago
[flagged]
rhaway84773 4y ago
One would think that a comparison with the UK would be a smart one to make considering the media coverage stabbings in the UK receive, and the fact that homicides in the US tend to be conducted using firearms instead. Turns out, shockingly to me at least, that the US also has a much higher deaths due to stabbing rate than the UK. 0.60/100k residents in the US vs 0.08/100k residents in the UK. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-deaths-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-... That’s almost an entire order of magnitude. And on top of that you add the many order of magnitudes greater homicides in the US thanks to firearms.

notamy 4y ago

> It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-02h. A small point about language, in case you or anyone else didn't know: In English, it sounds weird to use "female" as a noun to refer to people. If, in that sentence, you would replace "female"/"females" with a word like "man"/"men," then you probably want to be using "woman"/"women" instead of "females." Using "female" as a noun for people can come off as dehumanising since it's how we refer to ex. animals in various situations. This applies to men too! Use "men" or "boys" or similar instead of "males"! Dehumanising language affects everyone. Not upset / telling you to change immediately / etc., just thought it might be useful to bring up in case (: Edit: Done engaging with this, thanks for the comments all! Don't want to accidentally start a flame war any more than I may already might have. Sorry mods! Some light reading on the topic that might help: "Why is calling women females a bad thing?" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/tvp97b/why_is_calling_women_females_a_bad_thing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/tvp97b/w... "I hate when men call women "females" instead of saying women" https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/u735sl/i_hate_when_men_call_women_females_instead_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/u735sl/i_h... "CMV: Using the word “female” to talk about a woman or girl is not sexist/wrong/inappropriate" https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/hzj5ox/cmv_using_the_word_female_to_talk_about_a_woman/ https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/hzj5ox/cmv_us... "When did calling females, female become offensive?" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/re0dc0/when_did_calling_females_female_become_offensive/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/re0dc0/w... "What’s the deal with calling women “females?”" https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/xa3jwp/whats_the_deal_with_calling_women_females/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/xa3jwp/whats_the_deal_...

drstewart 4y ago
> In English, it sounds weird to use "female" as a noun to refer to people. By "it sounds weird" you actually mean "in the past few years there's been a movement to hyperfocus on this small language quirk that nobody really cared about in the past". Just so we're clear.
- lph 4y ago

lucideer 4y ago

I live in "one of the European capitals". It is super safe here, but there are still stabbings. The crime-rate is also enormously variable between European cities. > No more. Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. If this were a comparative articles on SF crime-rates you might have a good point, but it isn't. And I say this having had a shooting happen on the street outside my hotel room the last time I stayed in SF - one event isn't a pattern (though in fairness if you look at comparative firearm incidents between US & European cities you're a bit more likely to see obvious disparities).

User23 4y ago
> Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. You only have to be wrong about getting murdered once.
coldtea 4y ago
>Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. It's doesn't need to be "a single event" that happened to the parent. Many individual observations, talks with residents, learning what they consider "normal" and "acceptable" baseline are also very possible to scare someone used in a safer city off for life. Then there are also the actual stats.
- lucideer 4y ago
  I was just addressing that their comment seemed to be reacting to "a single event", rather than to review of actual stats (which is, by contrast, a good & rational approach).
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
> Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#description https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des... But changing your habits while in a city in the top 2% for crime might be.
nonethewiser 4y ago

supergirl 4y ago

stabbing is quite common in some big european cities. that’s because guns are hard to find

onion2k 4y ago
stabbing is quite common in some big european cities London is the European (well, kind of) city that most people cite as being bad for knife crime. It's still rare enough that a stabbing will make the national news though. For a basic comparison, in 2022 there were 710 murders in the UK. 282 were stabbings. In the US there were 26,031 murders (a little more than 20,000 using guns), which is 36 times more, while the US has a population that's only 5 times that of the UK.

hestefisk 4y ago

I always thought SF was relatively safer compared to other U.S. cities, eg LA?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ghaff 4y ago
While there are obviously crime stats that give crime rates for whatever somewhat arbitrary political boundary defines a city, they can tell a misleading story. LA covers a lot of different types of areas. SF does to some degree as well (and a lot of visitors are most familiar with area around the Moscone which is at least near somewhat sketchy areas). But this is really true in general. I consider Boston a pretty safe city. But there are absolutely areas that I wouldn't be walking around late at night.

moremetadata 4y ago

[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Mizoguchi 4y ago

Somatic Marker Hypothesis The somatic marker hypothesis (Bechara and Damasio, 2005; Damasio et al., 1991) highlights the importance of emotions in decision making. The hypothesis postulates that reasoned decision making is influenced by biasing signals (somatic markers) arising from changes in the body periphery. First triggered as a reaction to experienced feedback (e.g., increased heart rate or visceral responses), the somatic reactions are assumed to be reactivated in similar decision situations. It is argued that there are primary and secondary inductions of emotional responses. The primary induction can be understood as innate or learned affective responses arising from a confrontation with pleasurable or aversive stimuli. Secondary inducers comprise affective responses induced by the recall of past events or anticipation of future states.

UncleMeat 4y ago

Many years ago my dad worked for a british company. Some of his coworkers were traveling to DC for business and staying in a very nice hotel. They asked my dad if they should buy a gun to be safe in DC. He was floored. No. Jesus Christ. Violence exists. You can compare risk between places and activities. But decisions should be based on data, not headlines and hunches.

devoutsalsa 4y ago
I used to live in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, an area full of homeless people, drug dealers, and probably other things. I hosted a foreign woman via couchsurfing.org and she asked if my neighborhood was safe. I told her she should be fine as long as she didn't bother anyone and didn't stay out too late. She then corrected herself and said she wasn't worried about the criminals. She was worried about being shot by the police.
- danrocks 4y ago
  [dead]
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I know we like to dunk on the police but that’s just incredibly clueless.
nonethewiser 4y ago
The ridiculous part of that story is the expectation that they could just buy a gun and walk around with it in DC. Concealed carrying is a viable option but not something you can do after you simply walk off a plane. Also, walking around and taking care of yourself is just not in the realm of known data. You should consider the known data, sure, but don’t ignore your instincts on the ground. That is insane.
ghaff 4y ago
Obviously buying a gun wasn't the solution, but at least "many years ago" DC was pretty bad. I was at a company event and the wife of one of our dinner guests was cut and robbed right outside of a downtown business hotel. And absolutely no one thought this was a freak or particularly out-of-the-ordinary event.

pookha 4y ago

I like Europe but you're exaggerating...I got robbed in Amsterdam and could have been stabbed to death in Frankfurt. London felt dicey in certain spots too (turns out it has 95\1000 rate which is 20% higher than the average in the UK)...To anybody traveling through Europe you've got to be aware of your surroundings because it's not always super safe and there can high risk of crime in tourist areas.

toyg 4y ago
Lol yeah. The reality is that any metropolis will have dodgy areas. Tokyo is super-safe, but even there you don't really want to look funny at a yakuza bouncer in Ueno at 3am. The question really is whether SF has more dodgy areas than average, and I guess the answer is yes. I've been a couple of times, and it was a long time ago, but some very central areas felt a bit too unsafe even during the day.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Part of the thing with SF is that it's somewhat unusual in that a business traveler attending an event at the Moscone is at more or less ground zero for some of the seedier parts of town: the Tenderloin, Civic Center, generally W/SW of the Moscone. (This probably used to be somewhat true of the Javits in NYC but that whole area of the city has generally gentrified with the Hudson Yards project being the latest big change.)
Erem 4y ago
I also came terrifyingly close to becoming a stab victim in Frankfurt. Those blocks around the train station are as hard as any place I've been.
- pookha 4y ago
  You nailed it. That Irish pub across from the Frankfurt train station isn't a super-safe establishment.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Anon goes into daylight. "This German guy looked directly at me, he was probably about to stab me." "Europe is so dangerous omg."

Equiet 4y ago

Lots of comments about relative safety of US vs European cities. Looking at the data, you need to scroll past 9 US cities (all big cities) until you find the first European city (relatively small city you never have a reason to go to) in this crime ranking: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp Europe is definitely safer than the US.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Which 9? I see 5, then Bradford, UK
- tough 4y ago
  Brexit?
  - klohto 4y ago
    I didn’t realize Brexit meant you change a continent
    - tough 4y ago
      They have always been a non-continental island AFAIK
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    They left the EU, not Europe
balls187 4y ago
Aside for the active warzone.
0xDEF 4y ago
The "problematic" parts of Copenhagen and many other European cities are often counted as being part of other smaller suburban municipalities/cities that are too small to appear on such lists. Nation-wide statistics show that Europe is definitely much safer than the US. However I would rather compare metropolitan areas than cities.

dang 4y ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic or regional flamewar. Of all the things we don't need here, that is one of the easiest to avoid. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html