Louisville #3: Safest Cities for Families with Young Children

More great news for our city! Sperling’s has rated Louisville, KY the third safest cities for families with young children. How do their rankings work? I wondered the same thing myself. Here’s what they evaluate:

• 25 criteria encompassing child-focused, safety-oriented behaviors and regulatory best practices
• filtered out cities with the highest crime rates
• considered air quality, incidence of child pedestrian accidents, injuries and drowning
• also focused on accessibility to hospitals; response time for fire and police personnel; and laws, codes and regulations that address smoking, home inspections, smoke and CO alarms, pool safety and bike helmets

Looks like they were quite thorough! Here’s their Top 10 safest American cities.

1. Boston, MA
2. Columbus, OH
3. Louisville, KY
4. Minneapolis, MN
5. New York, NY
6. Portland, OR
7. San Francisco, CA
8. Seattle, WA
9. Tampa, FL
10. Virginia Beach, VA

Lastly, here’s their synopsis on our fine city.

Louisville, Ky.: Home to horse racing’s biggest event, the Kentucky Derby, Louisville also has bragging rights to low pedestrian accident rates, quick fire response times and a high number of hospitals per capita. Louisville’s fire protection is provided by 20 independent fire departments that work together through mutual aid agreements to protect the public from the dangers of fires. In 2007, Louisville instituted Operation School Zone, which used new laser technology to target and cite school zone speeders in order to create a safer environment for children traveling to and from school.

We knew about the hospitals but didn’t know about the low accident rates. Good job Louisville!