There's fair, and then there's fair or not as the case may be. Looking around our fair land, it would be great to see only good stuff. But the world isn't made like that. We found a vast expanse of space, and then the people came and messed it up by building places to live and burning fossil fuel to fill the air with city smog. And people, being people, stayed selfish and potentially criminal, so some areas have a bad record for behavior. Of course the wealthy can buy their own plots of paradise and build a wall around it. Security guards keep the rest of the world at bay. But the rest of us have to live in this urban sprawl where the problems of unemployment and the credit crunch are putting everyone under pressure.

So where do we choose to live? Most of us are trapped into an area by birth. It's surprising how hard it is to leave our roots even when things start going bad. When we do move, it's usually to find work. This again can be a trap. Sometimes, the places with work are in the rougher neighborhoods. Then we're into playing the game of deciding just how far we want to commute everyday from our haven to work and back. And don't think this is just a problem for the individuals. It's a problem for local government as well. There's the mayor and the elected officials with the responsibility of providing a safe place to live, a good place for business. If people are moving out of an area or refusing to move into it, this is bad for the local economy. There are less people paying taxes, so there's less money to spend on anything important.

There's a website run by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. It shows you how many vehicles are stolen around the country. The good news is the rate of thefts is falling, but there remain major areas where you no sooner park your car and walk away before it's driving off. California and Texas are top of this list of shame. This is bad news for anyone outside California looking for cheap car insurance quotes. Inside California, the law was changed to prevent insurers from loading the premium rates based on your ZIP code. Everyone else gets hit when the accident statistics and theft rates combine in a perfect storm of insurance claims.

You can only do so much in fitting anti-theft devices and GPS trackers. In the end, all you can do is insure and hope to recover most of the lost value if your vehicle disappears. Get the maximum number of car insurance quotes and compare the premiums. One or two of the local insurers may have lower rates. Rates should be but no one said insurance or any part of our lives here had to be fair.

*And just in case you can't remember, the title of this article is a reference to the "bad hat" line in Jaws, now used as the catchphrase by Brian Singer's production company at the end of House.