We averaged all four safety sub-scores across 1,109 cities to find the kind of safety the planet is collectively worst at. One dimension came out lowest — and it's a city's single weakest point four times out of five: night safety, a global average of just 68.9/100.
Averaged across all 1,109 scored cities, night safety is the single dimension the world is worst at — a global mean of just 68.9/100, nearly ten points below healthcare (78.8) — and it's a city's single weakest link 80.5% of the time.
Every Kakapo city score is built from four separate sub-scores: how safe it is after dark, everyday personal-crime risk, getting around, and medical care. Most of our studies ask which cities are strong or weak. This one asks a bigger question: of those four kinds of safety, which is humanity collectively worst at? We took all 1,109 scored cities — one row per city, largest population, every sub-score present — and averaged each dimension across the entire planet. One number came out clearly lowest.
| Safety sub-score | Global average | % of cities where it's the weakest link |
|---|---|---|
| Night safety How safe the streets feel after dark | 68.9 | 80.5% |
| Personal safety Everyday crime risk to a visitor by day | 70.7 | 3.8% |
| Transport safety Roads, transit and getting around | 74.7 | 12.4% |
| Healthcare Medical care if you're hurt or fall ill | 78.8 | 3.3% |
It fits what the streets actually feel like. Daytime pulls in crowds, open shops, working transit and visible policing — the natural guardians that keep public space safe. After dark most of that thins out at once: fewer people, shuttered frontages, quieter stops, longer waits. A street that's completely ordinary at 2pm can be the sketchiest part of the trip at 2am, and that shift happens almost everywhere. It's why night safety, not crime in general or bad hospitals, is the dimension most cities are weakest on.
Night safety is the weakest link on every continent — but "weakest" starts from wildly different baselines. Here's the global soft spot broken down by region, worst first.
| Region | Night-safety average | Cities |
|---|---|---|
| Africa | 49.5 | 71 |
| South America | 53.6 | 66 |
| North America | 65.7 | 241 |
| Asia | 69.1 | 289 |
| Europe | 75.7 | 350 |
| Oceania | 82.6 | 43 |
An after-dark score in the low 50s (much of Africa and South America) and one in the low 80s (Oceania) describe genuinely different experiences of the same street at midnight. The dimension the world is worst at is also the one where geography matters most.
If you take one habit from this study, make it the night check. Before you book, look at a destination's after-dark score specifically, not just its overall number — because the overall figure is buoyed by the three dimensions the world is better at, and the night score is the one most likely to be the real risk. Then plan around it: licensed rides over walking late, staying where the streets stay busy, treating the small hours as a different city than the one you saw at lunch.
We took every city Kakapo scores — one row per city (largest population), NYC boroughs excluded, all four sub-scores present — for 1,109 cities in total. For each of the four sub-scores (night, personal, transport, healthcare) we computed the plain global average across all cities, and separately counted how often each was a given city's single lowest sub-score. The regional table averages the night sub-score by continent (cities with no country attached are excluded from that cut only). Full weighting is at https://kakapo.travel/about/methodology. Scores are comparative model estimates, not official ratings.
Free to cite in journalism, research or content — all we ask is a link back. Copy the attribution below:
Kakapo Editorial Team (2026). The World's Weakest Link: The Kind of Safety the Planet Is Worst At. Kakapo. https://kakapo.travel/blog/worlds-weakest-link-2026
Writing about travel safety, nightlife or a specific region? We give journalists custom data pulls at no cost — the full sub-score averages, a single region's night-safety table, or a city-by-city after-dark breakdown. Email [email protected] and we usually reply the same day.
Republish the graphic below — the image links back here automatically. Or pull the raw numbers from the open dataset.
Kakapo publishes real safety scores for every destination, drawing on national travel advisories, local crime data, healthcare infrastructure, and night-safety measures. Kakapo Studies is our research imprint — independent editorial, no advertiser influence on scores. Contact: [email protected].