# The Perception of Travel Risks: A Reality Check
Since the inception of my budget travel blog in 2003, I’ve consistently highlighted issues related to safe travel and the perception of travel risks. Despite the reality that people—particularly Americans—often encounter more lethal dangers at home than abroad, those who don’t travel frequently perceive the world as a significantly scarier place, necessitating heightened caution during vacations.
Regardless of the advancements in human evolution, we still allow our ingrained instincts to dominate our judgments about what is risky or frightening. The 24-hour news cycles and local TV stations exacerbate this by amplifying fears to retain viewership.
This is especially evident with foreign travel, where perceptions of risk based on isolated historical incidents frequently overshadow logical assessments grounded in actual statistics and facts. Even though nightly news is saturated with reports of violence and crime at home, we worry about visiting foreign countries because of isolated incidents, such as a minivan full of tourists being robbed years ago.
## Evaluating Safety in Mexico
I’m writing this from Mazatlan, Mexico, during my fourth visit to the city. Local expats consistently express how much safer they feel here compared to the USA. This sentiment persists despite Mazatlan being in Sinaloa, the former stronghold of the notorious drug lord El Chapo and a focus of the initial episodes of *Narcos Mexico*.
Since moving to Guanajuato state with my family in 2010, we’ve enjoyed a serene, crime-free life despite the state’s frequent news coverage about cartel-related violence. It’s crucial to distinguish between gang violence and violence aimed at tourists or foreigners—a distinction applicable both in Mexico and in cities like Chicago or Detroit.
According to the [U.S. State Department statistics](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/while-abroad/death-abroad1/death-statistics.html), there were only 51 homicides involving U.S. citizens in Mexico in 2022, a decrease from around 75 the prior year. Including drug-related cases, these figures suggest that many victims were not random bystanders. Significantly, these homicide figures are lower than those for drownings, suicides, and auto accidents.
Consider that this is just 51 deaths across *all of Mexico* over an entire year, a country hosting 28 to 40 million visitors annually!
If you’re American and live in one of the 25 largest cities, your hometown likely sees more murders, often involving random violence like mall or movie theater shootings. Such incidents don’t occur in Mexico, partly because of strict gun control—there’s only one gun store in the entire nation. In contrast, around 70% of guns in Mexico originate from Texas, notorious for its lenient gun laws.
Yet, some of the most common Google searches each month are: “Is Mexico safe?” “Is it safe to visit Cancun?” “Is Mexico City safe?” and “safest place Mexico.”
## Emotional Responses Often Outweigh Logical Assessments in Safety Perceptions
Reviewing various academic studies since I began covering this topic underscores that our cultural approach to risk evaluation is flawed across many dimensions. We habitually overestimate the likelihood of rare events, such as plane crashes or terrorist attacks, while neglecting everyday dangers like car accidents, slips in bathtubs, or ATV mishaps. (Not to mention chronic issues like heart disease stemming from smoking and obesity.)
One global trend is the excessive risk attributed to air travel, despite it being among the safest modes of transportation. In 2023, there was only one fatal commercial air crash involving a prop plane flying between Kathmandu and Pokhara. One incident! This was out of millions of safe flights. Yet, this single event dominates media coverage, leading to widespread belief that flying is unsafe.
In reality, air travel would have to experience 1,000 times more incidents to approach the danger level of driving your car to a local store.
When any incident within a country garners international news, the immediate consequence is a drop in visitors, regardless of the incident’s geographical relevance. Twenty years ago, I addressed a global survey highlighting discrepancies between perceived and actual risks, and statistically, these discrepancies persist in perception.