A new neighborhood watch survey by AA in Ireland has sought to determine Ireland’s attitudes to approaching dangerous situations in their neighborhoods. Overall, eight percent of the 5,296 respondents said that they would step in on a dangerous situation to offer help.

The Irish Daily Star reports on the AA survey and their search for Ireland’s “have-a-go heroes.” Cavan has topped the list with an impressive 13.5 percent of respondents saying they would approach a suspicious-looking person or group.

Cavan held a wide margin of difference with Laois, where only 4.9 percent of people said they would try to help. Dublin was near the bottom of the list as well with 6.4 percent.

Longford, Carlow, Offaly, Kilkenny, Mayo, Westmeath, Roscommon and Meath are all above the one-in-10 mark and therefore are topping the list for their reported bravery.

64 percent said that they would report suspicious activity to gardai, a big contrast from the 18 percent who said they would report such activity to a neighborhood watch group.

73 percent said that they would try to take notes of suspicious activity, including a car’s registration number.

A thankfully low statistic of only 3.4 percent said that they would do nothing in the face of a potentially dangerous situation and rely on the hope that their suspicions were ill-founded.

Nearly three quarters - 71 percent - said that they would be interested in joining a text-message alert system for their neighborhood.

Conor Faughnan, director of consumer affairs at AA Ireland, said, “A number of text-based community alert systems are being piloted by gardai around the country and there have been some real success stories.”

He added: “There seems to be good potential for the initiative in certain areas and people are genuinely interested to learn more about it.”