Study ranks Lauderdale least safe of U.S. cities

Traffic fatalities. Murders. Hurricanes. Sea level rise. Financial ripoffs. Those are the factors that personal finance website WalletHub says make Fort Lauderdale less safe than New York (132nd), Chicago (135th) Los Angeles (143rd) and 181 other cities.

With one of the highest rates of traffic fatalities per capita in the United States, Fort Lauderdale is dead last in a ranking of the 182 safest metro areas in the U.S., according to a new study by personal finance website WalletHub.

And that’s a list that includes cities that have drawn attention in recent years for violent crime — places like Chicago, which was ranked 135, and Baltimore, which was 151.

The nation’s two largest cities, New York (132) and Los Angeles (143), were deemed safer than Fort Lauderdale.

So what led to the Venice of America getting slapped with such a dubious distinction?

The WalletHub study considered the various ways in which a person can feel threatened or insecure into three larger categories: home and community safety, natural disaster risk, and financial safety.

The community safety category took into account crime and public safety, looking at metrics like the rates per capita of various crimes including murder.

The natural disaster risk considered the probability of each metro area facing either earthquakes,

floods, hail, hurricane storm surge, tornadoes, and wildfires.

The third, financial safety, took into account the unemployment rate as well as the rates of poverty, foreclosure, identity theft, and others.

The study ranked the importance of each of these three general categories, with more weight being given to home and community safety than the other two.

Fort Lauderdale was ranked 147 when it came to most traffic fatalities per capita.

Fort Lauderdale also was among the worst cities for financial safety, as it was a four-way tie for the 115 spot when it comes to percentage of households with emergency savings. The other three cities are all in South Florida, too: Miami, Hialeah and Pembroke Pines.

For reasons that were not made clear, a ranking for natural disaster risk wasn’t available for Fort Lauderdale. However, the threat of hurricanes looms for South Florida.

Rounding out the Top 5 safest cities on the list were, in order from one to five, Nashua, N.H., South Burlington, Vt., Warwick, R.I., Columbia, Md., and Gilbert, Ariz.

The highest-ranking cities in Florida were Cape Coral (22), Pembroke Pines (30), and Port St. Lucie (52).