[learc83]

>When it had been broken into Ive been trained to blame myself for leaving something visible or parking too near the wrong neighborhood. But living abroad I learned some countries don't have these issues.

Granted there are definitely some countries with lower crime rates, but for most property theft the US is actually ranked pretty well. For auto theft, which is the closest comparable crime I can find to stereo theft with available data, the US ranks below Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. And for residential burglaries we rank below England, Scotland, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia.

Also, as long as we are using anecdotal evidence, out of everyone I know (well enough to know this), there are maybe half a dozen who have been robbed 4 of those have been while on vacation in Europe.

[jballanc]

Without knowing the details of the statistics, I wonder if the disconnect between perception and statistics has to do with population distribution? I've lived in the suburbs of the US, as well as right in Manhattan. In the suburbs, many nights we wouldn't even lock the door. In Manhattan I was attacked by thugs with a knife in the subway.

I now live in Ankara, a city with an official population larger than Chicago, but I can walk 15 min from my home and be in the middle of a field with no signs of civilization for miles. I think nowhere else in the world has urban sprawl that comes anywhere close to what you find in America. So, if you want an accurate comparison, I think you'd have to isolate and remove the statistics from suburbs, as they essentially don't exist outside the US.