And most important............
Always lock your doors immediately after entering the vehicle. Not after you put the key in the ignition, not after putting your packages down...
Immediately.
I once survived an attempted robbery/beating because I had my doors locked. They guy tried to start a conversation with me so I had my window down a few inches...it was a cold winter night.
I put my foot on the brake and saw another set of pant legs in the glow of the brake light and realized then that I was about to have a problem.
As I put the vehicle, a pickup truck, in gear the one at the window reached in over the window in an attempt to reach the door lock.
This was years ago, early ‘70’s, and the truck had mechanical windows. I grabbed the handle and rolled that window up so fast that I caught him by the elbow. I took him for a nice bit of road work up a steep hill and would not stop until I got to the top of the hill.
When I let him go, he had enough.
It is a long story and really worth telling, but the heart of it is that he tried to start a conversation with me during which he pulled a $20 out of his pocket, then asked me to open my door and put the light on it so I could tell him if it was counterfeit, which of course I refused on the grounds that I did not know a good one from a bad one, etc., and it was during that exchange that I put my foot on the brake.
Bottom line: You may meet a strong arm robber or one with a knife, but you are more likely to be met by one with a sad story about he needs his battery jumped off, he is out of gas, you have a flat on your right rear and need to look at it, etc.
So lock y our doors and THINK.
Cell phones make us much more safe if we can stay out of the guy's reach for a few minutes, which a locked door does for you. In the case of the flat tire story, you could rather than getting out, say something like “I'll just call the cops and ask them to help me.”
Remember, you might really have a flat tire because he let the air out of it. Women have been abducted with just that strategy.
Thank you for your post. I think I should take my just turned 17 last week daughter with me to a self-defense class and hammer this stuff home in her head. She is a smart girl but could easily be fooled by some creeper. I’ve always said, since she was only in 1st or 2nd grade and her younger brother was taking karate classes . . . that before she went off to college I would sign her up for something, not sure IF a local class offered by police officers would be sufficient or ??? what. That time has almost arrived, she is a jr. in high school.