The most and least safe US cities in 2024

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Patrick Clarke, TravelPulse (TNS)

Travelers searching for America's safest cities may want to head to New England this holiday season.

The experts at WalletHub recently compared more than 180 cities across the U.S., analyzing more than 40 key indicators of safety, such as traffic fatalities and assaults per capita, unemployment rate, natural disaster risk level and the percentage of the population that's uninsured to determine which locales are the safest to visit in 2024.

Vermont was the big winner, with South Burlington and Burlington ranking first and fourth, respectively. Meanwhile, Warwick, Rhode Island ranks third, with Portland, Maine also making the top 10 at number nine.

South Burlington ranks first for financial security, a category that accounts for 20 of the 100 points and considers a variety of factors like poverty rate, unemployment, job security and retirement plan access, among other things.

According to WalletHub, Warwick — a city just south of Providence — boasts the fewest thefts per 1,000 residents and the second-fewest assaults per capita.

Casper, Wyoming, and Boise, Idaho, rank second and fifth, respectively, while other top 10 safest cities include Yonkers, New York (sixth); Cedar Rapids, Iowa (seventh); Columbia, Maryland (eighth) and Virginia Beach, Virginia (10th).

Columbia — a suburban destination just outside of Baltimore — ranks first for home and community safety, a category that accounts for 60 of the 100 points.

Factors examined in this area include the presence of terrorist attacks; the number of mass shootings; murders and non-negligent manslaughters per capita; forcible rapes and hate crimes per capita, among other safety indicators.

The 10 most safe US cities

Memphis, Tennessee, has the unfortunate distinction of being the least safe city in the country, based on WalletHub's research, ranking 180th for home and community safety and 181st for financial security.

Memphis is tied for the most traffic fatalities and assaults per capita and has the lowest percentage of households with emergency savings.

Other poor-performing places include Detroit; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore; Cleveland; Oakland, California; Philadelphia and San Bernardino, California.

Detroit has the highest unemployment rate of any city that WalletHub examined and is tied for the most assaults per capita.

Houston, which ranks 171st out of 182 cities, has the highest natural disaster risk level while Washington, D.C., ranks top five in terms of hate crimes per capita.

The 10 least safe US cities