Tag Archives: RV Safety

Is Mexico Safe For RV’ers?

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Is Mexico Safe for RV’ers is a question that just does not seem to want to go away. People are listening to the stories they hear on the news and they think it applies to everyone traveling south of the Mexican border.

We have now been in Mexico almost continuously for a year, with only about a week out of the country to do our taxes in Canada and get new visas. Before that we have probably put in another year in the form of 1 to 3 month RV visits. We have never had a problem, and have never met a person who had a problem, or even heard about a problem.

The killing that is going on in Mexico is mostly between the drug lords, as they fight for their share of the drug trade. There is also quite a bit of fighting between the drug lords and the government, in the form of the police and military.

There are at any one time approximately one million Americans in Mexico. Many of them living there. There are also at best guess a couple hundred thousand Canadians. You know that if an American or Canadian gets killed in Mexico, it becomes headline news. Be honest, how often do you actually hear of an American or Canadian actually getting killed in Mexico. Consider that for one million drivers in the U.S., 125 will die in a given year. 50,000 thousand total in the U.S. per year. And that is for an activity that the average person only does for about an half an hour per day. If 125 Americans died per year because they were in Mexico, there would be outrage. The number is closer to 5 per year, and those are usually involved in the drug trade in some way.

A Mexican citizen told me the drug lords consider the tourists as customers. In fact a lot of drug money gets laundered by building resorts. This same citizen told me that if a Mexican does something to a tourist, he had better hope that if he gets caught that it is the police that catch him and not the drug lords. With the later he will never be seen again.

True their are places in Mexico that are better avoided such as Ciudad Juarez. But the biggest danger there is getting caught in the cross fire. Consider Canada, it is viewed as one of the safest countries on earth to travel in, yet just a short time ago there was a gun fight between two gangs on a main Vancouver street, where ten gang members where shot. And in the smaller city of Abbotsford where I grew up a recent gang war resulted in over 700 shots getting fired. This happens everywhere. The truth is that if you considered all of North America from Canada to Panama, probably some of the most dangerous places to travel would be American cities like East Oakland California, Chicago, Washington D.C. and even Philadelphia.

The following is an Except from Lectronic Latitude, the blog connected with Latitude 38 Magazine. This is a magazine for boaters out of San Francisco.

“Here’s something you may want to ponder. Juarez has the highest murder rate in Mexico, yet it’s lower than that of tiny St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgins — “America’s Paradise” — where all the cruise ships pull in. Curious that you never see that reported in USA Today, isn’t it?”

At the moment the economy in the U.S. is making it difficult for Americans to spend time in their RV’s. So why not head south of the border to Mexico where the prices are great, there is lots of sunshine, and the people are friendly.

Always remember that the news papers and TV news shows are there to make money. So if they can sensationalize something they will.

George Bernard Shaw said: ~ “Two percent of the people Think. Three percent of the people Think that they Think. And Ninety Five percent would rather die than think”.

The ninety five percent let other people and the media do their thinking for them. If you are really thinking you would be asking “Show me the murdered tourists in Mexico”.

RV Road Safety in Mexico.

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Each year that we have traveled to Mexico and back, we have noticed traffic accidents. Now the first thing the reader will think is that we are talking about in Mexico. But that is not the case. On every trip to Mexico and back we have seen more accidents in the USA than we have in Mexico. In most cases we never saw any accidents in Mexico while we saw a number in the USA. The interesting part of this is the fact that we usually only spend about 3 or 4 days each way traveling through the USA but have spent as much as 3 months in Mexico.

In Mexico we do travel around a lot, it is not as if we are sitting still in one place and never see traffic.

On this last trip, we were only in Mexico for 5 weeks total. But we never saw any accidents at all. But on the trip down, and the trip back we probably saw at least a dozen. About 7 or 8 of these the vehicles being recovered looked so bad that we wondered if the people survived.

Now the reason that I am saying all this is that I have hear the objection a number of times that people are afraid of driving in Mexico due to the way Mexicans drive. But by my personal observations, an RV’er will be safer on a Mexican road than on a US road.

Now I am not saying that the Mexicans are not a bit crazy in their driving habits. The thing seems to be that they are so good at being crazy drivers that they seldom actually get into accidents. Where as we in Canada and the US have so much faith in our roads, and cars that we very seldom really become great drivers. We talk on our cell phones, talk to our passengers, look at the scenery, and just about everything else except keep our full attention on the road. Hence we have a lot more accidents.

In the USA and Canada we loose an estimated 50,ooo people a year to traffic associated accidents, and injure another 2,000,000. This is all for an activity that the average person only spends about 1/2 hour per day at.

Another good point to consider is the fact that people are afraid to travel in Mexico, because of being killed in some kind of violence. But consider this. There are about 5 million tourists that enter Mexico in a given year. About 5 get killed in some kind of Violence. (This number is much lower than tourists to the USA by the way.)

The average tourist spends about 8 days or 200 hours in Mexico.

Now compare this to drivers, where the average driver drives for about 1/2 hour per day, or close to 200 hours per year. About the same amount of time as an average vacation to Mexico.

Out of 5 million drivers about 700 will be killed and 30,000 will be hurt. The part of this I do not understand is that people will jump in their cars, speed, run yellow lights, pass on corners, and many other unsafe practices, many times with their children in their cars. Yet these same people will quake in their boots when travel to Mexico is mentioned.

Personally I would take the activity which is 140 times safer than driving, and that is traveling to Mexico.

For the full time RV’er Mexico is fantastic. The people treat you like gold, the prices are good. The main roads are in fantastic shape, and there does not seem to be near as many accidents. To me this is a no brainer.

See you in Mexico.

Safety While Full Time RV’ing

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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.