More recently, several more thorough studies have been completed by William Lucy at the University of Virginia, looking at auto accidents and murder by strangers. In one, he found that the ten safest places in the state of Virginia were eight of its most densely populated cities and the two counties abutting Washington, D.C., while the ten most dangerous places were all low-population counties.30 In another, he compared crash and crime statistics in eight large American cities between 1997 and 2000. Here the data produced more subtle results. The basic theory held true: car crashes far
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