The safety and perception of safety on roads are crucial factors that affect the development of places. Various economic, social, and environmental factors influence the level of safety and sense of security on the roads. The current study compares the safety of inner-city and suburban highways in 31 Iranian provinces based on the proportion of accidents and their fatalities in each location using a novel hybrid MCDM approach during three years 2018, 2019 and 2020. Modified ITARA, modified DNMARCOS, introduced in this research, and MV-CoCoSo were used to compare the safety of inner-city and suburban roads. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis based on two experiments has been made to assess the robustness of the research methodology. The findings indicate that both types of roads have low safety levels across all provinces based on two models (Modified DNMARCOS and MV-CoSoSo), generally among the 31 provinces of Iran, Tehran province consistently ranks last in both categories of inner city and suburban roads in all three study periods, signifying the least desirable position. In other words, Tehran province has been identified as the least safe province in Iran based on the indicators examined. Additionally, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province comparatively maintain a more favorable position than the other provinces. The study suggests that improving infrastructure, including road width, signage, lighting, and vehicle quality, is crucial for enhancing road safety. Additionally, the quality of vehicles plays a critical role in reducing the number of accidents and fatalities in urban and suburban areas. Moreover, the quality of cars plays a significantly higher role in reducing deaths on suburban roads than on inner-city ones.