On a scale of 1-10, how safe do you feel in the UAE?

Safety is not just being safe physically but also feeling safe mentally and psychologically.

On most weekdays, my two kids spend at least an hour playing in the community park with their respective friends. On days when my 14-year-old son can't go out or has to return early because he's got to prepare for some test or assignment, my little one (she's eight) stays on in the park and treks back around 8-ish in the evening along with her friend who lives next door. They don't need to cross a road, but my wife and I have often debated whether it's still 'safe' for them to undertake that 300-metre walk on their own at that time of the evening. Every such discussion necessarily dovetails into a comparison with 'back home' and each one of these discussions has ended in us thanking our stars that we've chosen to live in Dubai, in the UAE.

Safety is not just being safe physically but also feeling safe mentally and psychologically. We feel safe here. And we feel comfortable allowing our kids to walk back home after sunset. My wife (who's super safety-conscious) doesn't spend days fretting over whether she should get an additional layer of safety grill installed on the ground-floor glass windows of our house (she does have them in our house back home). We're not alone, of course. A study made public yesterday by the Abu Dhabi Government shows that 90 per cent of residents feel they are living in a safe and secure environment here. The stats will be no different in Dubai or another emirate. The UK-based $$$Which? Travel$$$$ magazine ranked the UAE as the world's second safest country (Iceland is first) in a report published in November 2018. This safety is no accident. The country, led by its wise rulers, works hard in keeping it a crime-free and safe environment for us. Let's make sure it remains this way by having an eye for safety and by reporting anything untoward to the authorities. As they say, a casual attitude toward safety is a casualty.