Last week in Charlotte a guy with his girlfriend stopped to help a stranded motorist. The hapless driver had his hood up and head buried in the engine when the victim in the story stopped to render assistance.
Next thing he knows he has a gun planted in the side of his head, his money is stolen and then, to add insult to injury, the motorist and his three accomplices walked he and his girlfriend round the back of some apartments and made him watch (at gunpoint) while they took turns raping her.
(To prove the depth of planning two of the three rapist actually used condoms)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, as sad as it may be you must not stop and help anybody. The best thing to do is either call emergency services (if the car you see is stranded on a major road) or, from a distance, ask the person if you'd like them to call someone for them to come and help. Getting out of the car to help yourself is a rookie mistake.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Sign, Sign everywhere a sign...
We have gestures for almost every type of problem you're likely to face when driving a car. Someone waiting to pull out of a drive in front of you? Wave them out.
Someone just let you in? Wave graciously to say thanks
See someone with their lights off? Flash yours
See a cop lying in wait? Flash your lights at other motorists to let them know
See someone with their turn signal on? Put yours on or turn on your hazard flashers or alternatively open and close your hand and they'll usually figure it out.
Someone cuts you off? Well, you all know that one right?
The only one we don't have a gesture for is to apologize to a fellow road user for something stupid we did...and stupid is often the cause of road rage incidents. Lets say you don't see someone in your blind spot and you change lanes and nearly force them off the road. They're angry and they come screaming up beside you intent on giving you a piece of their mind. What do you do? Scream back or flip them off? Surely not, it was your fault after all. And yet, if you do nothing they're likely to assume you're ignoring them, or don't care, which is only likely to compound the error.
I submit a great idea is to carry a piece of white cardboard in your car with the word "SORRY" written on it in large black marker and keep it accessible. If you do the inevitable and screw up, instead of making matters worse by ignoring the guy, or gesturing in a way that may be mistaken for something else, hold up your sign and smile. I'd be willing to bet a load of money that one simple move would eliminate a slew of road rage incidents across the country every day.
PS: If some enterprising soul reading this decides to market them and sell them at gas stations etc, be nice, give me a cut.
Someone just let you in? Wave graciously to say thanks
See someone with their lights off? Flash yours
See a cop lying in wait? Flash your lights at other motorists to let them know
See someone with their turn signal on? Put yours on or turn on your hazard flashers or alternatively open and close your hand and they'll usually figure it out.
Someone cuts you off? Well, you all know that one right?
The only one we don't have a gesture for is to apologize to a fellow road user for something stupid we did...and stupid is often the cause of road rage incidents. Lets say you don't see someone in your blind spot and you change lanes and nearly force them off the road. They're angry and they come screaming up beside you intent on giving you a piece of their mind. What do you do? Scream back or flip them off? Surely not, it was your fault after all. And yet, if you do nothing they're likely to assume you're ignoring them, or don't care, which is only likely to compound the error.
I submit a great idea is to carry a piece of white cardboard in your car with the word "SORRY" written on it in large black marker and keep it accessible. If you do the inevitable and screw up, instead of making matters worse by ignoring the guy, or gesturing in a way that may be mistaken for something else, hold up your sign and smile. I'd be willing to bet a load of money that one simple move would eliminate a slew of road rage incidents across the country every day.
PS: If some enterprising soul reading this decides to market them and sell them at gas stations etc, be nice, give me a cut.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
What'cha Reading?
This is an old bodyguard trick when travelling overseas (sorry for those of you with no travel in your future plans) to help lower your profile.
Buy a local newspaper or magazine and carry it with you. This sends off a signal to locals intent on kidnapping a rich foreign tourist (and remember, you're rich by most third world country's standards) that you are either a) a local, or b) have visited enough to understand the language.
[Can YOU spot the tourists?]
Either of those make you far less appealing as a potential target. You can do the same with local brands of cigarettes (assuming you still smoke) and/or your wardrobe. It's normally way too easy to spot the Americans in a lot of third world shitholes by their clothing, mannerisms, speech volume, and expensive jewelry and luggage. By eliminating or toning down the above you reduce your risk immensely in ever being singled out as a target.
Remember...do everything you can to lower your profile
Nick
Monday, March 19, 2007
Myths of Combat
I'm not going to attempt to cover all the myths of fighting...there's just way too many but one I can put to rest today is the old "If you're fighting a gang all you have to do is challenge the leader to a one on one fight and he'll accept, otherwise his gang members will assume he's gutless."
Whoever first wrote this gibberish has obviously never had a gang fight in his life. The above would work if the guy leading the gang had any honor, or if they gave you time to talk, or if they cared what you had to say. Unfortunately they have no honor and they don't care one iota about you...all you are to them is some temporary amusement or a food source.
Another myth that goes hand in hand with this one is that if you drop the biggest guy the others will run away. No, they will stomp the crap out of you because you just hurt one of their mates. I have stopped some fights with a technically perfect first technique that has dropped someone so hard the others have taken pause but, they weren't hard core gang bangers inured to violence of frightening degrees.
Now, hitting the biggest one will certainly eliminate one of the biggest threats but it will not scare others away just as challenging their non-existent honor will not work either.
In future entries I'll cover some strategies that have proven effective but for right now let's eliminate advice that just plain doesn't work.
Nick
Whoever first wrote this gibberish has obviously never had a gang fight in his life. The above would work if the guy leading the gang had any honor, or if they gave you time to talk, or if they cared what you had to say. Unfortunately they have no honor and they don't care one iota about you...all you are to them is some temporary amusement or a food source.
Another myth that goes hand in hand with this one is that if you drop the biggest guy the others will run away. No, they will stomp the crap out of you because you just hurt one of their mates. I have stopped some fights with a technically perfect first technique that has dropped someone so hard the others have taken pause but, they weren't hard core gang bangers inured to violence of frightening degrees.
Now, hitting the biggest one will certainly eliminate one of the biggest threats but it will not scare others away just as challenging their non-existent honor will not work either.
In future entries I'll cover some strategies that have proven effective but for right now let's eliminate advice that just plain doesn't work.
Nick
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Interesting Observation
This isn't so much a self protection tip as it is an observation...one that will resonate with martial artists everywhere. (and maybe insurance agents LOL)
You walk into the office on Monday morning with a black eye, a bruise or a swollen anything.
Everyone asks "Wow, what happened?"
If you reply with "I did it playing basketball, baseball, football, racquetball, volleyball or any other type of ball" the next words out of their mouth will be...
"Did you win?"
Now, if on the other hand you say "I did it in my Judo/Karate/Combatives/Ju-Jutsu or any type of martial arts class" the next words out of their mouth will be...
"You people are crazy" while they shake their head and walk away casting dispersions on your sanity under their breath.
I wonder what the difference is? Do they feel threatened? Are we making them realize they haven't covered that aspect of their life yet and rather than admitting that's a mistake it's easier to lump us into the "they're all crazy category?"
One of my students is an insurance salesman. He occasionally turns up at work with a training related bruise and runs the gauntlet of the head shaking crowd. Pretty funny when you think about it. They're all insurance agents in that office and they'll try and sell you on the benefits of protecting your car, your house and anything else they think needs coverage and yet they haven't covered themselves from the risk of being attacked, mugged, raped, assaulted and so on.
Given if you're killed during a car-jacking/robbery or home invasion you won't live to enjoy your house or your car which one makes more sense to insure first? Call me crazy if you like but I just think the "insurance policy" provided by good self protection training is more important than almost anything else I can think of.
You walk into the office on Monday morning with a black eye, a bruise or a swollen anything.
Everyone asks "Wow, what happened?"
If you reply with "I did it playing basketball, baseball, football, racquetball, volleyball or any other type of ball" the next words out of their mouth will be...
"Did you win?"
Now, if on the other hand you say "I did it in my Judo/Karate/Combatives/Ju-Jutsu or any type of martial arts class" the next words out of their mouth will be...
"You people are crazy" while they shake their head and walk away casting dispersions on your sanity under their breath.
I wonder what the difference is? Do they feel threatened? Are we making them realize they haven't covered that aspect of their life yet and rather than admitting that's a mistake it's easier to lump us into the "they're all crazy category?"
One of my students is an insurance salesman. He occasionally turns up at work with a training related bruise and runs the gauntlet of the head shaking crowd. Pretty funny when you think about it. They're all insurance agents in that office and they'll try and sell you on the benefits of protecting your car, your house and anything else they think needs coverage and yet they haven't covered themselves from the risk of being attacked, mugged, raped, assaulted and so on.
Given if you're killed during a car-jacking/robbery or home invasion you won't live to enjoy your house or your car which one makes more sense to insure first? Call me crazy if you like but I just think the "insurance policy" provided by good self protection training is more important than almost anything else I can think of.
Right On
I want to preface this post with the fact that I am not in anyway affiliated with OnStar or any company it may be parented by...I don't work for them, never have (probably never will) and certainly don't get any kick backs.
As an addition to my post about the self protection features of SUVs or 4x4s I wanted to talk about OnStar.
It's a service (for those readers in countries that don't have it) that comes in certain brands of cars that will, for a monthly fee, do certain things.
The base fee covers security, the next level offers things like directions and phone service and the premium package has a concierge service for booking restaurants and theatre tickets etc.
In the vehicle are a series of 3 buttons that you push depending on what you need and, when you push them, you are connected, hands free, to a real live operator.
Here's what I love about the system.
1. If your airbags go off, they call the car. If you don't respond they immediately dispatch emergency services. I listened to a chilling recording of a phone call one night on a current affairs program. It was from a woman in Florida who drowned in her car. She had driven off the highway at speed and ended up in the everglades with water leaking into the car. She pulled her cellphone out, and contacted emergency services but they couldn't locate her in time (The current affairs show was about the inability of emergency services to triangulate and locate cell phone signals) The same thing happened here to a girl in nearby Gastonia. She rolled her car into someone's field. When they found her three days later she had written a note to her family while she lay trapped and dying in the car. The OnStar feature in either of those two scenarios would have literally meant the difference between life and death.
2. If your car is stolen the police are called. Once you have a report number they call OnStar and they locate the car via the GPS system. My local Caddy dealer told me about one of their vehicles stolen by four black hip hop fans who cut the wire from the buttons thinking that would disable the tracking. The dealership realized about 5 hours later their car was missing. OnStar got involved and found the would be thieves in Richmond VA heading north. State Troopers were called and they blocked them on the Chesapeake Bay bridge.
3. Should you accidentally lock the keys in the car you call in and give them your pin number. Voila, they pop the locks from their control center.
4. If you or a family member is driving the car and is being followed by a suspicious vehicle or involved in a road rage incident etc they can push the emergency button and relay the info to OnStar who dispatch emergency services again. They also stay on the line till the professionals arrive.
5. Imagine your wife driving the car somewhere and getting lost and ending up in the wrong part of town? That happened to the family in LA that drove into the gang area and were shot for "trespassing" that was in the news a few years back. With the OnStar system you call them and they talk you through the directions step by step till you arrive at your destination.
From a self protection standpoint it doesn't get much better than the above. So, if I'm going to buy a vehicle I'd rather have an SUV and, if I'm going to buy one of them I'd opt for the one with OnStar.
Food for thought
Nick
As an addition to my post about the self protection features of SUVs or 4x4s I wanted to talk about OnStar.
It's a service (for those readers in countries that don't have it) that comes in certain brands of cars that will, for a monthly fee, do certain things.
The base fee covers security, the next level offers things like directions and phone service and the premium package has a concierge service for booking restaurants and theatre tickets etc.
In the vehicle are a series of 3 buttons that you push depending on what you need and, when you push them, you are connected, hands free, to a real live operator.
Here's what I love about the system.
1. If your airbags go off, they call the car. If you don't respond they immediately dispatch emergency services. I listened to a chilling recording of a phone call one night on a current affairs program. It was from a woman in Florida who drowned in her car. She had driven off the highway at speed and ended up in the everglades with water leaking into the car. She pulled her cellphone out, and contacted emergency services but they couldn't locate her in time (The current affairs show was about the inability of emergency services to triangulate and locate cell phone signals) The same thing happened here to a girl in nearby Gastonia. She rolled her car into someone's field. When they found her three days later she had written a note to her family while she lay trapped and dying in the car. The OnStar feature in either of those two scenarios would have literally meant the difference between life and death.
2. If your car is stolen the police are called. Once you have a report number they call OnStar and they locate the car via the GPS system. My local Caddy dealer told me about one of their vehicles stolen by four black hip hop fans who cut the wire from the buttons thinking that would disable the tracking. The dealership realized about 5 hours later their car was missing. OnStar got involved and found the would be thieves in Richmond VA heading north. State Troopers were called and they blocked them on the Chesapeake Bay bridge.
3. Should you accidentally lock the keys in the car you call in and give them your pin number. Voila, they pop the locks from their control center.
4. If you or a family member is driving the car and is being followed by a suspicious vehicle or involved in a road rage incident etc they can push the emergency button and relay the info to OnStar who dispatch emergency services again. They also stay on the line till the professionals arrive.
5. Imagine your wife driving the car somewhere and getting lost and ending up in the wrong part of town? That happened to the family in LA that drove into the gang area and were shot for "trespassing" that was in the news a few years back. With the OnStar system you call them and they talk you through the directions step by step till you arrive at your destination.
From a self protection standpoint it doesn't get much better than the above. So, if I'm going to buy a vehicle I'd rather have an SUV and, if I'm going to buy one of them I'd opt for the one with OnStar.
Food for thought
Nick
Friday, March 16, 2007
Good For The Environment? No. For You, Yes!!
This issue was raised on a forum I'm on and it was about the big bad SUV (or 4x4s for UK readers)
From a purely self protection viewpoint they're the best vehicle you can wrap about yourself.
1. Sitting up so high gives you a vantage point over regular cars and bikes...forewarned is forearmed.
2. You have the ability, should it be necessary, to bug out over sidewalks, curbs, fields and terrain that will leave a normal car gasping for breath and traction.
3. If you're involved in an accident you will probably survive. The "greenie" in the pregnant skateboard that you hit will not. This, understandably, bothers the "earth biscuits" but to my way of thinking it makes me want to buy an SUV immediately. The old "If you can't beat them, join them" springs to mind.
4. If inclement weather descends upon you, whether it be ice, mud, rain or snow etc you have the ability to climb in the truck and go. That's huge from a self protection view point. The guy in the car is caught in the flood waters or immobile...you are not...you'll probably be the guy going out to rescue him (at which point, if he's an "earth biscuit" he probably won't bring up how much he hates you and your gas guzzler)
5. If it becomes necessary you can bulldoze obstacles (cars etc) out of the way be it a road block, road rage or, if you're hemmed in and a car-jacking commences. You can't do that in a normal vehicle.
6. You have the room to load family and all the gear necessary to get out of dodge in the event of a disaster or riot etc and head for the hills (which you can get up thanks to the 4 wheel drive ability of the vehicle)
So, while they may guzzle gas, and they may not be so hot for the environment they are wickedly brilliant from a self protection viewpoint.
Something to think about
Nick
PS: I had an argument with a guy once when I had my Tahoe. He was bitching about the gas guzzling, harming the environment, killing kids and wiping out families in cars. He shut up when I reminded him that every single argument he was making against SUV's could be levelled against him and the car he drove by someone who rode a bike (motorcycle or pedally)
Cars guzzle gas compared to bikes. They're road hogs compared to bikes. The take up a whole lane and usually have one person in them - bikes do not. They kill motorcyclists almost every time they hit one...and they do that on a regular basis, usually because they're on their cell phone...and the list goes on. I also owned a motorcycle at the time and he didn't so there he was, without a leg to stand on.
From a purely self protection viewpoint they're the best vehicle you can wrap about yourself.
1. Sitting up so high gives you a vantage point over regular cars and bikes...forewarned is forearmed.
2. You have the ability, should it be necessary, to bug out over sidewalks, curbs, fields and terrain that will leave a normal car gasping for breath and traction.
3. If you're involved in an accident you will probably survive. The "greenie" in the pregnant skateboard that you hit will not. This, understandably, bothers the "earth biscuits" but to my way of thinking it makes me want to buy an SUV immediately. The old "If you can't beat them, join them" springs to mind.
4. If inclement weather descends upon you, whether it be ice, mud, rain or snow etc you have the ability to climb in the truck and go. That's huge from a self protection view point. The guy in the car is caught in the flood waters or immobile...you are not...you'll probably be the guy going out to rescue him (at which point, if he's an "earth biscuit" he probably won't bring up how much he hates you and your gas guzzler)
5. If it becomes necessary you can bulldoze obstacles (cars etc) out of the way be it a road block, road rage or, if you're hemmed in and a car-jacking commences. You can't do that in a normal vehicle.
6. You have the room to load family and all the gear necessary to get out of dodge in the event of a disaster or riot etc and head for the hills (which you can get up thanks to the 4 wheel drive ability of the vehicle)
So, while they may guzzle gas, and they may not be so hot for the environment they are wickedly brilliant from a self protection viewpoint.
Something to think about
Nick
PS: I had an argument with a guy once when I had my Tahoe. He was bitching about the gas guzzling, harming the environment, killing kids and wiping out families in cars. He shut up when I reminded him that every single argument he was making against SUV's could be levelled against him and the car he drove by someone who rode a bike (motorcycle or pedally)
Cars guzzle gas compared to bikes. They're road hogs compared to bikes. The take up a whole lane and usually have one person in them - bikes do not. They kill motorcyclists almost every time they hit one...and they do that on a regular basis, usually because they're on their cell phone...and the list goes on. I also owned a motorcycle at the time and he didn't so there he was, without a leg to stand on.
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