Finance site WalletHub is constantly ranking things, and as many Floridians know, our home state is always down with keeping it interesting, for better or worse.
The latest report from the site calls Florida the 5th least safe state in the nation. No, it's not because of alligators or glazed-eyed tweakers yelling at traffic or invasive species; WalletHub used criteria such as violent crime, financial loss due to climate disasters, occupational injuries, vehicular fatalities and lack of insurance to reach its conclusions. Interestingly, the only featured area in which Florida performed in the bottom 5 was that last — we came in 48th in the country in terms of insured residents, probably due to Rick Scott not taking that Obamacare money way back when. (We didn't even make the bottom 5 in climate disasters — apparently Mississippi and Louisiana are still worse off when it comes to hurricanes per capita.)
What's the least safe state in America? According to WalletHub, it's Mississippi, which fared poorly in a number of categories, and came in dead last in terms of "Emergency Preparedness." The safest state? Vermont, of course, because "moose attacks" and "tick infestation" weren't specific criteria for this particular report.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 7, 2018.