u/Early_Cantaloupe7153

Hey everyone,

A while ago I shared a small side project I built to understand the “real” safety map of San Francisco at night using official incident data.

The first version was basically a cleaner way to look at recent police incident data on a map. Useful, but still a bit raw. You could see the dots and heatmap, but it didn’t always answer the question I actually cared about:

“Is this specific block, hotel, parking spot, or walking route a good idea right now?”

So I kept working on it.

The new version now does two things that make it much more practical:

1. Pin-based Zone Safety Score
   You can long-press anywhere on the map and instantly get a 0–100 safety score for that exact area. I built this for checking specific streets, Airbnb/hotel locations, parking spots, or places I’m about to walk through.

2. Route Safety / Risk Analysis
   Instead of only showing crime dots, the app now looks at reported incidents near your active walking route and gives you a clearer idea of the route’s risk before you start walking.

It still uses official open-source police / incident data, not rumors or user-submitted panic posts. The app currently supports San Francisco, Chicago, and London, and SF is still one of the main cities I’m testing with.

To be clear: I’m not claiming this can magically tell you whether a street is “safe” or “unsafe.” Crime data is imperfect, delayed, and missing context. But I do think it’s useful to have an objective layer when comparing routes, checking unfamiliar neighborhoods, or walking at night.

I’m still keeping it free while I test the early version and improve the scoring.

Curious to hear from locals again:

Would a zone score or route safety score actually change how you choose a walking route in SF, or do you mostly rely on instinct and local knowledge?

I need to vent for a minute.

Yesterday I shared a post about something I’ve been working on for runners. Nothing aggressive, no “download now” energy, no discount code, no spam. Just something I made because I run, I collect race memories, and I thought other runners might find the idea useful too.

The first reaction was basically: “are you just promoting your own app?”

And honestly, it got to me more than I expected.

I get it. Reddit gets a lot of spam. People are tired of fake recommendations and low effort self-promo. Fair enough.

But sometimes people are just building things because they actually care about the space they’re in. I’m a runner. I race, I train, I post about running, I obsess over medals and finish memories like many people here. So when I share something related to that world, it’s not because I’m trying to trick anyone.

Also, the app is free. I’m not making money from it. That’s not really the point.

I ended up deleting the post because I didn’t want to argue or sound defensive. But it left a weird feeling.

Maybe it would be useful to someone. Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe someone would give feedback and make it better. Maybe it could add something small to the running community.

Anyway. Thanks for listening. Just needed to get that out.

Wings for Life World Run is coming up again, and I’ve been thinking about how different this race feels from a normal road race.

Some places still have the Catcher Car experience, and with the App Run format, people can join from almost anywhere. Same strange but fun idea: keep running until you get caught.

In the early years, Wings for Life used to give medals, and I still have one from 2017. It feels like a special one because there’s no fixed finish line or normal race distance attached to it.

I’m running it in Istanbul this year. My best so far is 23.5 km, and I’m aiming for 35.5 km this time.

Anyone else have an old Wings for Life medal? Or running it this year?

Also, today I started r/MedalMonday for exactly this kind of thing: race medals, finish memories, and the stories behind them. If you like sharing those, you’re welcome there too.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to forget the early milestones in running.

Your first 5K, first 10K, first race bib, first medal, first time you ran without stopping, first finish line feeling… at the time they feel huge, but later they get buried somewhere in Strava, photos, notes, or Instagram posts.

I’ve been running for a while now, and looking back, I actually wish I had kept those early memories more organized.

Do you keep any kind of running archive for yourself?

A photo album, notes app, spreadsheet, medal wall, anything like that?

I recently started using a small iOS app called Finisher Wall to keep races, medals, finish times, photos, and notes in one place. It made me curious whether newer runners care about saving these moments too, or if most people just finish the race, post it once, and move on.

I’ve done two ultras already this year, and most of my recent running has been on trails, hills, and mixed terrain.

Now my next goals are more road-focused: Wings for Life World Run first, then a half marathon about 6 weeks later. For the half, I’d like to move closer to 1:30. My current PB is 1:38.

The question I’m trying to figure out is how much I should actually shift the training toward road specific work, without losing the strength and durability I get from trails.

I’m planning to keep most easy volume on trails or rolling terrain, but move the key sessions to flatter road routes: tempo work, HM-pace intervals, and some faster strides/shorter reps for turnover.

For those of you who move between ultras and trail races and road goals, how do you usually handle that transition?

Do you fully switch surfaces for a road block, or do you keep trail volume in and just make the quality sessions more specific?

A while ago I kept thinking about how weird it is that when you’re in a city, you can easily check restaurants, traffic, weather, or rent prices, but when it comes to safety, most people are just guessing.
You hear things from friends, you read random posts, maybe you search crime maps that feel outdated or hard to read, but it’s still difficult to answer simple questions like:
Is this area actually risky?

Has anything been happening around this block lately?

Is there a safer route if I’m walking home?

That frustration is what made me build ZoneScout.
It’s an app that uses real police data to help you understand crime patterns around a location. You can check a place’s safety score, explore recent incidents, and compare route options based not just on distance, but also on safety.
Right now it works in Chicago, San Francisco, and London.
I’m sharing it here because I’d genuinely love feedback from people who care about cities, neighborhoods, and how this kind of information should actually be shown.

Would love to hear what feels useful, what feels unclear, and what you’d want a tool like this to do better.

It’s a safety app that uses official open police data to help users understand crime risk in specific areas and along their walking route. Right now it covers London, San Francisco, and Chicago.

With ZoneScout, you can:

• drop a pin and check a location’s safety score
• view crime heatmaps and filters
• create a safer walking route and see the risk around it

App Store link:
https://apps.apple.com/tr/app/zonescout-crime-map-safety/id6760105754

Thanks!

https://preview.redd.it/wjhqsetqzvxg1.png?width=2980&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecd8d8e2aa1619b1044ced445cc4a0bba0d44015