Ask The Captain: The Ultimate Travel Safety Tool
The ultimate travel safety tool? I need to get my hands on one of those. Who makes it? How much does it cost? Is it Prime eligible? Here are the actual answers. You make it. It costs awareness and knowledge. And no, you can't order it off Amazon.
Me? What Do You Mean Me?
Wait, are you telling me I'm responsible for my own safety while traveling? Good news, bad news, same answer: yes, you are. Here's the thing though, you're responsible for your own safety at home too. The effort and knowledge it takes to stay safe on the road might look different than what you're used to in familiar surroundings, but the payoff of travel is worth far more than that effort.
When Perception Meets Reality
Our sense of danger cuts both ways when we're traveling. Sometimes it's an asset. Stand at the edge of a 200-foot drop-off with no guardrail, and that heightened alertness is doing exactly what it should. But perception can also mislead you. You might feel completely relaxed lounging at a beautiful beach resort, right up until you learn that area has a real problem with westerners being kidnapped. That same feeling of ease doesn't hold up once the facts change.
Flying vs. the Ground
A great example of perception versus fact is how people feel about flying. As an airline captain, I actually see my overnights on the ground in various cities as more dangerous than my time in the airplane. Look at the actual numbers, air travel against traffic accidents, violent crime, and the rest, and that instinct holds up. Flying is dramatically safer per mile than driving, by a wide enough margin that it isn't close. Even so, I regularly meet people who are far more afraid of the flight than of anything that could realistically happen to them on the ground at their destination.
Where Is It Safe to Travel?
"Where is it safe?" and "where is it dangerous?" aren't even the right questions. A better one is, how safe is it to travel to this specific place? Governments like the United States, the UK, and Australia all publish travel advisories, and while people debate how reliable they are, they're a reasonable starting point. They're not complete, though. Take a city I visit often that has real, well-documented pockets of gun violence. There's no formal advisory covering that. (Sorry, Chicago, I'm talking about you.) The internet fills in a lot of those gaps. Expat blogs, traveler forums, and local news feeds all offer real insight that an official advisory won't.
Compare to What You Know
Speaking of cities with gun violence problems, Chicago (or pick any major U.S. city dealing with the same issue) rarely makes anyone's "too dangerous to visit" list. I find it useful to size up an unfamiliar destination against a place you already know well. I've had people tell me they'd never go to Bangkok because of a bombing there, the same people who'd fly to Atlanta or Boston without a second thought, despite both cities having their own bombing history.
The Balance
None of this means every destination is safe enough for a vacation. I'm not booking a camping trip to Syria anytime soon. I'm also not telling you to visit somewhere that doesn't sit right with you, that's not a good experience either. My real suggestion is to get informed and stay aware, enough to keep you from feeling safe somewhere you're actually not, and just as importantly, to keep you from being scared off a place where that fear isn't backed up by anything real.
So, What to Do?
Get informed. Use the internet and the tools it gives you to actually research a place.
Make reasonable decisions. Don't let media sensationalism or outdated information do your thinking for you.
Be realistic. Crime exists almost everywhere. A pickpocket working the crowds in Barcelona isn't fundamentally more dangerous than one working Times Square.
Go see the world. I'm perfectly safe locked in my bedroom at home, and I wouldn't experience much of anything from in there.
One thing worth remembering: Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Barcelona, and Bangkok are all among my favorite places to go, and I'll keep going back, because in my experience, they're plenty safe for travel.
original publication 2019