Top Ten Misconceptions About Staying Safe
When it comest to staying safe, it’s not what you don’t know that can get you into trouble. It’s what you think you know for certain, that just isn’t so.
After every viral video of violence or breaking news story of tragic consequence, there is often an immediate and exponential increase in social anxiety over just how safe we really are. But perhaps one of the reasons the anxiety over our inability to keep ourselves and our loved ones protected is at an all-time high, is because our understanding of what it means to stay safe, is at an all-time low.
To help course-correct this deficiency, and aid in our collective effort to ensure our certainty of safety, I was happy to be joined by Jason Brick, host of the YouTube channel “Safest Family on the Block.”
Together, we identified our “Top 10 Misconceptions About Safety” and then talked through some of the reasons behind these misconceptions, how they can contribute to a "false sense of security,” and how you can then use this newfound understanding to help you and your family live your very best life in the safest way possible.
Author’s note: These are in no particular order other than the order in which they appear. Totality of circumstance and scenario are different for everyone.
Safety and security are often used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. This can be a losing proposition. The best way to think about the difference is to think about an umbrella. The canopy that blocks the rain and keeps us from getting wet -- that’s security. Security is therefore the safeguard that helps prevent a known risk from ever becoming a reality. Safety, however, is how we feel knowing the that provisions of security are working in-line with our expectation. When the umbrella is performing properly, we feel safe we won’t get wet. In other words. “Safety” is a feeling. “Security” is a state of being.
#2. “Stranger = Danger”Children have a difficult time understanding the concept of nuance. “Stranger Danger” is one of those rhymes that sounds clever and is easy to remember, but it ultimately does more harm than good. If your child is separated, lost, and requires immediate help, they need to know they have your permission to participate in their own protection. What we should really should be saying is, “Stranger danger is a one-way street.” Which is to say that, while it is wildly inappropriate for an adult to ask a child for help, it is perfectly acceptable for a child to ask an adult for help. (You can learn more about The Safety Trap of “Over-Protecting Children here)
#3. “The police are responsible for my personal safety.”“Protect and Serve” is a motto readily identifiable with the service ethos of police departments around the country, but it is important to understand the mandate of the police is to “public” safety and not your “personal” safety. In fact, this very common misconception was so misunderstood that it required a court ruling: “Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to pre- serve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public.”* -- * Lynch v. NC Dept. of Justice, 376 SE 2nd 247 (NC App. 1989). What does this mean for you? It means the police will prioritize the safety of your community over the safety of you as individual. And this is an important variable to be contemplated before putting our own emergency response plan into action.
#4. “The biggest risk to my personal safety is violent crime.”When the 24 hour news cycle and our social media feeds exploit our anxiousness in order to instigate our engagement it can be easy to get so caught up in the possible that we lose sight of the probable. But the truth is, most of us will live our lives in relative peace. Most of us will never experience an active shooter situation. Most of us will never be caught-up in the throws of a terror concern, or be kidnapped, or held hostage. In fact, the vast majority of us will never experience any of the concerns which may contribute to our everyday anxiety about the risks were are most likely to face. Truth be told, the number one threat to your personal safety is heart disease. Then it’s cancer. After that, it’s in-the-home accidents like falls, fires. kitchen injuries, drowning, and the accidental consumption of poison. So, if you’re really concerned about your personal safety, start drinking more water, eating better foods, and doing your best to become more active in your everyday life.
#5. “I don’t need to worry about safety, because I already know what to do.”Be careful to not fall victim to The Safety Trap of “Overconfidence.” Truth is, many of us are poorly “calibrated” when it comes to our ability. Which means it is very important that we audit ourselves with honesty. What do I mean by calibration? If you and I were to go to the batting cages, and you predicted that you would hit “about half” of the first ten pitches that came across the plate, and then you went out and hit five or six out of those ten pitches, you would be well calibrated. But if you only hit two or three, your overconfidence would have had a direct impact on your calibration. Overconfidence can have a negative impact on our health, our wealth, and ever our own success. And if we do not learn how to keep our confidence in check, we may very well sabotage our own safety as well.
#6. “The people in charge of security have my best interests in mind.”This particular misconception falls squarely into the realm of The Safety Trap of “Expectation.” This occurs when we believe things are being done to serve one purpose, but they are really there to service another. For example, it may be easy to expect that a school security plan will prioritize the safety of the students, but in reality, many schools choose to instead focus on “accountability” more than they do “survivability.” Another common misconception is walking into a store and seeing all of the cameras, and scanners, and security officers and then thinking, “Wow...this place must be pretty safe.” In reality, those safeguards are not in place to keep you safe. Those safeguards are in place to protect the product first, and to monitor the activities of their employees second. To the extent those security features may add some additional benefit to investigators after a violent crime has occurred, that would honestly be more of a happy coincidence than intended design.
#7. “Having a security alarm means your home will always be protected.”The job of a security system is not to prevent someone from breaking-in but rather to alert you to the fact that someone is trying to break-in. Which means, the most important aspect of having a home security system, is leveraging the added time it provides to activate your family’s emergency response plan, and get your family to safety. What you do not want to have happen is to fall into The Safety Trap of “Alarm Fatigue” where the alerts and tones of your home security system to become akin to the car alarm going off down the street -- where you hear the alarm, but then pay it no mind because it has “cried wolf” so many times before.
#8. “A gun is the best home security money can buy.”Of all of the things you can do to keep yourself and your family protected, buying a gun is not even in the top ten things I would recommend. If the security of your home is so deficient so as to be a critical concern, I would recommend you buy a dog instead, because a gun will only get you dead. Without a doubt, a well-trained dog is the best home security money can buy. Early notification, deterrence, and physical protection all in one. Now, as a caveat -- and as a combat veteran, second amendment advocate, and gun owner myself -- I would never tell someone that they should not exercise their right to bear arms. That said, gun ownership comes with a lot of responsibility -- the least of which are proper licensing, continuous training, safe storage, and proper mindset. In my professional experience, the number one argument against the everyday citizen effectively using a handgun in a high-stress-self-defense scenario, is to simply watch how clumsy someone gets whenever they try to take a selfie with their favorite celebrity. Because if most people are that clumsy, chaotic, and unable to control their own basic motor function with the very same phone they use everyday of their life, the introduction of a firearm into that same set of circumstance would most certainly end in disaster. Bottom line: self defense tools are fine, but a self defense mindset is better.
#9. “My neighbors have nicer things so they are more at-risk.”This is what I refer to as The Safety Trap of “False Equivalence.” When we are evaluating our risks, we have a tendency to compare our own situation to that of other people in our social orbit. If we have a nice house, but we don’t have the nicest house on the street, we may incorrectly predict our risk to be lower than that of our neighbor. If we have a nice car, but our neighbor has a nicer car, we may falsely believe that their car is much more likely to be targeted for theft than our own. But in almost every circumstance, we would be wrong. When it comes to being targeted for a crime, what we think has nothing to do with it. What matters most is the perception of what other people believe to be true. More important than how wealthy you are, is how wealthy other people believe you to be. Moreover, the fact that you may not be in the fanciest house or have the newest car may suggest to would be offenders that you may be the easier, more successful target, because you may be inherently less vigilant about protecting something of lesser comparative value. At the end of the day, the single most influential factor of target selection is “likelihood of success.” So, the more you are able to promote enough of a protective posture for a bad guy to believe they will be successful targeting someone else, than in targeting you, the safer you will be.
#10. “My child is too young to learn about safety.”It is always better to have the safety talk too soon rather than too late. It doesn’t matter if the concern is about inappropriate touching, homelessness, mental health, or safe sex. As soon as something is ripe for your child to recognize, it’s time to have the talk. Too many parents want to believe their own anxieties are irrational, and that their child, “couldn’t possibly be that old already.” Trust your instincts. If the risk is high enough to give you anxiety, it’s time to make your child aware of that real world risk. Truth is, there is a very high likelihood that by the time you consider having a conversation with your child about a safety-related issue, your child has not only thought about the issue you may be hesitant to discuss, but they have also very likely had some worry about that very same issue. The earlier you are able to establish that no fears are foolish, and position yourself as a trusted source of information for their questions, the more likely they are to seek your sage counsel for years to come. (See also: “Top 5 Protective Strategies For Ensuring Child Safety”)
