St. Louis is the most dangerous US city to live in: study

St. Louis was ranked the most dangerous city in the US in a new study because of high rates of crime and dangers like natural disasters and car accidents.

St. Louis came in dead last in a WalletHub report comparing the safety of 182 US cities, thanks to a high assault rate and other issues.

The city has weathered various turmoil over the past few years, including devastating flash flooding, a likely serial killer and decades of disturbing police assault allegations.

WalletHub compared the cities across home and community safety, natural-disaster risk and financial safety metrics. A total of 42 subcategories, including hate crimes, unemployment, natural disaster risk and even vaccination rates, comprised the three metrics.

WalletHub compared the 182 cities across the 42 metrics, giving each a metric scored on a 100-point scale. Cities with high scores represented high levels of safety in that category.

“We then determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample. In determining our sample, we considered only the city proper in each case, excluding cities in the surrounding metro area,” the study stated.

St. Louis scored a paltry 42.8 out of 100, the lowest score, but was fared only slightly worse than Fort Lauderdale, Florida with a 48.8 and San Bernardino, California with a 54.4. Fort Lauderdale was rated the most dangerous city in 2020.

New York City, which consistently makes headlines for rising crime and just surpassed the highest rate of subway killings in the last 25 years, scored better than 55 other cities.

Columbia, Maryland is the safest city to live in, according to WalletHub, and has the fewest traffic fatalities. It scored a 85.99 out of 100.

Rounding out the top five safest were Nashua, New Hampshire; Laredo, Texas; Portland, Maine and Warwick, Rhode Island.