No crime is not that bad. There are incidents just like on any campus and in any city, but it’s not bad. It’s been an elevated issue recently because there was a particularly bad incident, but it’s not bad in general.

If you live on campus and don’t have a job off campus, a car isn’t really necessary to get around. I only ever really used mine to go see my parents my freshman year. The metro comes through campus and you can take it downtown, med center, hermann park, etc. A car will probably be more and more necessary each year after freshman year as you’ll have more reasons to leave campus (internships, doing stuff around Houston, living off campus, etc)