Virginia, Maryland named in safest suburbs to live in US, says new study

(NEXSTAR) – When it comes to you and your family’s safety, nothing can help you feel more at ease knowing that where you live is considered a ‘safe neighborhood.’ But what constitutes a ‘safe neighborhood’ exactly?

A new study from SmartAsset examined 360 different suburbs across the U.S. and looked at a variety of data that an average person would consider an unsafe area to live, including violent crime rates, property crime rates, excessive drinking, and more.

Landing at the top of the list was Lehi, Utah, with a population of a little over 81,000 people and located just south of Salt Lake City. Lehi is the only suburb in the entire study where the percentage of adults who excessively drink was below 10%. It also ranked relatively low for violent and property crime per capita.

Ranked just below Lehi were three suburbs located around Washington, DC: Bethesda, Maryland, Great Falls, Virginia, and Rockville, Maryland.

Great Falls, in particular, ranked extremely low in terms of crime compared to the rest of the country, as well as having a relatively low amount of traffic deaths.

Here’s the full list of all 360 suburbs in the entire country ranked according to SmartAsset.

As for the other end of the spectrum, several suburbs landed at the bottom of the rankings for a variety of reasons.

Finishing last in the rankings was Lumberton, North Carolina, which fell due to its extremely high number of traffic deaths per 100,000 people, at 41.4 (the highest on the list), and the second highest amount of violent crime per capita.

In the second-to-last is Plymouth, Massachusetts, which, despite having a very low amount of traffic deaths, had more than double the amount of violent crime per capita as Lumberton, NC.

A strange suburb ranked near the bottom is Scottsburg, Indiana, where not a single violent crime was reported, according to SmartAsset. Despite this, Scottsburg finished with the third-highest amount of traffic deaths in the country, which is the primary reason the violent crime-free suburb fell to the bottom.

To see the full study on the safest suburbs in the U.S., you can go to SmartAsset’s website.