Today the conversation came up again about safety while full time RV’ing, especially in Mexico. The conversation also went into the BLM or free camping areas of the USA. It seems a lot of people are concerned about safety when traveling. But if you look at statistics you will soon start to wonder why you were concerned in the first place.
A couple of years ago I came across a statistic that said that out of every five million tourists that went into Mexico, five died in some kind of violence. When people first hear this they say “see I told you so”. But lets analyze this a bit. The average tourist spends about 8 to 10 days in Mexico, or lets say 200 hours.
The average person drives about 1/2 hour per day or also approximately 200 hours a year. When you take the same number of five million, approximately 700 are going to die in car accidents, many painfully, and another 300,000 are going to be injured, many of them seriously. Yet people think nothing of getting in a car and driving with their family in the car with them, yet quake in their boots when traveling in Mexico is mentioned.
If you look at the numbers for death by falls and drowning in a shower or bathtub, my comment is you go take a shower, and I will go to Mexico where it is safe.
Recently on Yahoo I read an article that the United States is one of the most dangerous western countries to travel in. This is the second time that I have come across a similar article. Yet most people do not think twice about getting in their vehicle and going to the mountains or a lake for the weekend.
So if you are comfortable traveling in this way, you should not be concerned with traveling Full Time in an RV. If you are nervous about traveling in the USA, consider traveling in Canada where the gun murder rate is about one tenth of what it is in the USA. Or travel to Mexico where it is even lower than that.
The fact of the matter is that there is no difference in the safety level while living in a regular home or condo, or living Full Time in an RV.
Have you ever noticed that when you decide to do something like live in an RV or travel to Mexico, that people will start telling you stories about things that supposedly happened to others who did the same thing. These stories are always bad. If you do a bit of digging you will soon find that the people who are telling these stories actually would love to do what you want to do but they are scared. So they will tell stories to try and keep you down at their level, since they do not want to see you succeed where they are afraid.
Always consider the source when you hear these stories. I heard many stories about Mexico before the first time we took our RV down there. But when we were actually in Mexico and talking to all the other RV’ers we met down there, we found that we never met anyone who ever had a problem, in fact we never met anyone who knew anyone else that had a problem.
So go ahead take the leap into the Full Time RV Lifestyle, travel to Mexico and Canada, and before you leave tell your friends to be carefull in the bathtub.