Big Cities, what areas are safe?
I don't want this to be a thread about Second Amendment rights, or how big of a shotgun is needed to be safe. And I don't mean for this question to have any racial implications. It's just a question...
Forum Discussion
It is local knowledge, varies with each city, and is subjective. Even small towns and rural areas have places where some visitors, or even some locals, fell unsafe. In our town of 30,000 people there are some who won't go to the "wrong" side of the tracks, though a third of the population does juust fine living there. I have friends who are terrified to be alone on a country road because there are not crowds of potential witnesses to protect them.
I generally don't take a RV into large cities, off the highway/freeway system, for traffic reasons. It is really easy to get into places where there is no room to continue moving and you need a lot of cooperation from traffic behind you to back out. I Visit big cities all over the world on foot, using transit systems, and use a guide, hired or published, to learn the places and times to go and not to go. For people who have this general perception that cities are dangerous, many of the places I go, things I do, might be frightening to them, and thus called "dangerous" when they are not dangerous at all.
In general, in areas where the drug trade is active, it is dangerous to get involved in the drug trade, and to some extent to be there casually as a stranger, because they think you are there to buy. In most large cities, the places where it is most likely something will be stolen from you are the places visited heavily by tourists, rather than the "bad" neighborhoods. The thieves go where the pickings are good, looking for anyone not careful with their personal property.
There is also the numbers thing. Lone predators, or small groups, prey on individuals. They leave larger groups of people, especially larger than a couple,malone, because outcomes are less predictable.
I can't help you with Oakland. Maybe NYC, Chicago, Tulsa, San Antonio, Lisbon, Rome or Prague, but not Oakland.
I generally don't take a RV into large cities, off the highway/freeway system, for traffic reasons. It is really easy to get into places where there is no room to continue moving and you need a lot of cooperation from traffic behind you to back out. I Visit big cities all over the world on foot, using transit systems, and use a guide, hired or published, to learn the places and times to go and not to go. For people who have this general perception that cities are dangerous, many of the places I go, things I do, might be frightening to them, and thus called "dangerous" when they are not dangerous at all.
In general, in areas where the drug trade is active, it is dangerous to get involved in the drug trade, and to some extent to be there casually as a stranger, because they think you are there to buy. In most large cities, the places where it is most likely something will be stolen from you are the places visited heavily by tourists, rather than the "bad" neighborhoods. The thieves go where the pickings are good, looking for anyone not careful with their personal property.
There is also the numbers thing. Lone predators, or small groups, prey on individuals. They leave larger groups of people, especially larger than a couple,malone, because outcomes are less predictable.
I can't help you with Oakland. Maybe NYC, Chicago, Tulsa, San Antonio, Lisbon, Rome or Prague, but not Oakland.
