Other than stupidity and visiting a few neighborhoods in the larger cities at night, there is not much that will hurt you. West Michigan is notoriously safe. It is not uncommon to see young women walking alone at midnight, perfectly safe. With a low crime rate and a very law-and-order population, staying safe is easy as long as you exercise common sense.
talk
Everybody thinks they speak "without an accent", but this notion is especially strong in Western Michigan, and not without some justification. A local legend says that the residents of one city or another in the area have the "standard" pronunciation of American English. While this is probably apocryphal, local pronunciation is virtually indistinguishable from that heard in most Hollywood movies and national TV newscasts. If you're used to those, you should have little difficulty understanding people here. But visitors with "exotic" accents from places such as Brisbane, Bangalore, or Boston might have to speak slowly to be understood by the unpracticed ear of the natives, and the natives may have to speak slowly to make themselves understood to these visitors.