Mazatlan has a very large police / military presence which is kind of an eery feeling. I drove around Mazatlan with the windows down however and felt safe enough.
You should have felt safe. Those are the good guys.
A large city with
no visible police force would have been
more eerie.
The drive from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo is considered dangerous by many, but I didn't have any issues and I would do it again without hesitation.
I've only really heard that about the free road. Of course, only part of the route has a toll option anyway... I get the impression that specific area used to see more action than it does nowadays. I used to see a
lot of military presence there.
Overall Mexico seems pretty safe. I wasn't at any point fearing for my life or worried about being a victim of violence
Of course, that can be deceptive. But the numbers just really aren't all that alarming. Mexico, before the recent war on drugs, had been seeing declining rates of violence for decades, such that the uptick since 2007 has only put it back to where it used to be in the 1970s. And, statistically speaking, safer than Jamaica and Belize and even Puerto Rico.
The police down there are almost too honest in many ways. They were all very professional, but if you go down to Mexico getting pulled over and getting questioned / searched should almost be expected.
Polite and honest in my experience also. But it's important to remember that they
are the authority and they carry powerful weapons. And they are on the lookout for seriously dangerous people. I don't know if you were aware, but there were two guys from Wichita who were shot dead at close range by a special forces checkpoint in Saltillo while they were on there way to Guanajuato, right around the timeframe you were down there. The investigation is still ongoing, and the officers have been imprisoned and face up to 50 years behind bars, but there is so far no apparent reason for the attack. The officers claimed they were fired at first, but the Americans had no weapons in the car and tested negative for GSR. Not to frighten you or anything, but I just wanted to say that sometimes things
do happen.
I also arguably drove through some of the so called sketchier areas of Mexico.
Not the sketchiest. Those would be Ciudad Juárez and Ciudad Chihuahua. Torreón is up there, but I'm not sure if you actually went into the city at all. Overall, you weren't in any places that are more violent than, say, East Saint Louis–and I bet you never think twice about driving I-55 through there.