report<\/a> examined all 50 states for their emergency preparedness and for residents’ personal and residential, financial, workplace, and road safety. Factors that weighed into the rankings include specific crime rates per capita, the share of the population that is uninsured, road quality ratings, workplace injury statistics, and more.<\/p>\nTexas ranked at the bottom of the list as the 48th “safest” state \u2014 or the third least safe state. It’s joined by several other Southern states, like Mississippi (No. 50), Louisiana (No. 49), Florida (No. 47), and Arkansas (No. 46).<\/p>\n
According to WalletHub, Texas specifically ranks third to last in the nationwide “emergency preparedness” category, which was determined based on the prevalence of climate disasters causing $1 billion or more in damages from 1980-2024, and the loss amount resulting from those disasters.<\/p>\n
The Lone Star State also ranked 40th (or 10th worst) across three safety categories: personal and residential safety, financial safety, and road safety. The report additionally found that Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents nationally.<\/p>\n
Texas’ “workplace safety” was the state’s highest-ranking category, landing 30th nationally.<\/p>\n
Additional rankings that determined Texas’ overall safety include:<\/p>\n
No. 30 \u2013 Assaults per capitaNo. 32 \u2013 Fatal occupational injuries per 100,000 full-time workersNo. 32 \u2013 Sex offenders per capitaNo. 35 \u2013 Murders and non-negligent manslaughters per capitaNo. 36 \u2013 Fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles of travelNo. 41 \u2013 Loss amounts from climate disasters per capita<\/p>\n
According to the report, the five safest states in America are all located in the Northeast. Vermont leads as the country’s safest state in 2026, followed by Massachusetts (No. 2), Maine (No. 3), New Hampshire (No. 4), and Connecticut (No. 5).<\/p>\n
Though every state has varying levels of safety, WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo asserted that the safest places in the U.S. categorically invest in protecting their residents. Top-ranking states have low crime rates and diligently maintain their road infrastructure, and other states that prioritize their residents’ safety have “strong economies and job markets that prevent people from falling into dangerous financial situations.”<\/p>\n
“[The safest states in America] have high levels of occupational safety and disaster preparedness, too,” Lupo said. “In addition, states are made safer by efforts that individual residents take, such as forming a neighborhood watch or working in firefighting and EMT jobs at high rates.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While no state is invulnerable, some do more to protect their residents than others. And a new study…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468988,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,427,7959],"class_list":["post-468987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-hot-headlines","tag-most-popular-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}