If you’re lamenting being stuck at home this coming Thanksgiving holiday, here’s a small piece of solace: Maryland is one of the safest states to be in at Thanksgiving.
According to a new survey by the financial website WalletHub, Maryland rates No. 10 on the safety list for Turkey Day.
The website used a variety of metrics to compile its list: from COVID-19 statistics to mask requirements to number of multigenerational households to customer health checks at restaurants to the overall crime rate to drunk driving-related fatalities in the month of November.
Maryland was the state with the safest record when it comes to DUI fatalities in November. It finished No. 7 on the list for homes that are wired for the Internet ― meaning families are able to have holiday Zoom calls with relatives who live elsewhere. The state’s COVID-19 positive and hospitalization rates, while rising, are also fairly low compared to the spikes across the rest of the country.
The state does not rank highly when it comes to the overall crime rate ― it’s the 29th best of the 50 states ― or in the number of households with multigenerational families (46th best of 50 states).
Nine states that are safer than Maryland around Thanksgiving, according to the survey: Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Washington, Virginia, Massachusetts, Hawaii and New Jersey.
The five least safe states, from the bottom up: South Dakota, New Mexico, Montana, Missouri and North Dakota.
Josh Kurtz
Founding editor
Founding Editor Josh Kurtz is a veteran chronicler of Maryland politics and government. He began covering the State House in 1995 for The Gazette newspapers, and has been writing about state and local politics ever since. He was an editor at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, for eight years, and for eight years was the editor of E&E Daily, which covers energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill. For 6 1/2 years Kurtz wrote a weekly column on state politics for Center Maryland and has written for several other Maryland publications as well. Kurtz regularly gives speeches and appears on TV and radio shows to discuss Maryland politics.
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