It’s 10pm on a Friday and I’m deliberately avoiding the main road on my walk home from the Tube. Instead, I’m following the edge of Richmond Green, taking a slightly longer route down a cobbled pavement lined with CCTV cameras. It feels counterintuitive: I’ve spent years being told to avoid parks and green spaces after dark. But according to Safest Way — a new route-planning app designed around personal safety — this is technically the safer route back to my flat. Or as much as you can call any route safe, I guess. Will extra CCTV cameras deter an attacker — or simply help police identify my body afterwards?
That grim internal calculation, which most women have made at some point, is exactly what Safest Way is tapping into. The free app launched in London and several other UK cities this year, promising to give users the “safest” route from A to B using public data on street lighting, CCTV coverage and violent crime. There are three route options: the fastest, the safest and a “balanced” one in between.
