Do you have ditches on the side of the road where you live?

I was just wondering if you lived somewhere that didn’t have ditches, say in Manhattan, or any other large city, what your parent would have been worried about. My parents would yell at me if I was late coming home (pre cell phones) that they were “worried I was laying dead in a ditch somewhere.” It was never that I was laying dead in a field, or on a road or on a sidewalk. It was always a ditch. So did your parents worry about ditches?