I suppose the point is that "higher crime rate" is a deceptive piece of language. When people use that phrase there tends to be an implicit assumption that "higher crime rate" = "exactly correspondingly higher danger to you, the average visitor." This is rarely true. You may be subject to more risk in a high crime rate area than you would be in a nearby lower crime rate area, but that leads to the next point - the issue of unqualified relativity.

The word "higher" in "higher crime rate" is relative and allows you to attach whatever meaning you want. "Higher" relative to what? To adjacent neighborhoods? To neighborhoods in similar cities with similar demographics and/or socioeconomic profiles? How much risk do you subject yourself to by taking a stroll down the streets of that area? Is it more or less risk than you take by riding your bicycle a short distance without a helmet, or walking around outside in a rainstorm? I'm sure someone's job is to quantify this information, but when the average citizen tells you "don't go west of 43rd, it's a high crime rate area," you really have no idea what they're trying to tell you and they probably have no concrete idea what they mean.

edit: Lest I confuse my own point, people tend to very often be flat-out wrong about the crime statistics in their own cities. Local consensus about which areas are dangerous follows an availability cascade, where you tell people that an area is dangerous because that's what people told you when you moved there, and nobody ever goes online and notices that the crime rate in that area is actually no higher. I encourage everyone to Google the crime rates in their own cities, for you may be surprised.