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It’s almost impossible for me to drive anywhere in Los Angeles these days without seeing a ton of soccer mom SUV’s that have the ever trendy family car decal stickers on the back window. Although most of the cars I see with the family car decals do not include each family members name, I am concerned about the few that I have seen that do. It raises a very important matter in regards to family safety.
With all the recent reports of stalkers online, and predators trying to chat with underage kids on popular network sites like MySpace, I thought about how easy it would be
for a child predator to convince a child to let down their “stranger guard” if the predator seemed to know the family members by name. For example, little Izzie (names are taken from the picture) is walking home from school when a stranger pulls up next to her. The stranger has seen the family vehicle in her driveway and has memorized all the names that appear on the family car decal, even the dog Merlin. This potential child predator could easily call little Izzie by her first name, spew off some fictitious story about how her mom, Pete and Tina, wanted him to pick her up because they were out looking for Merlin, the “lost puppy”. Yeah, a bit cliche, but think about how easy it would be. Izzie would probably suspect the man knew her family, and could quiet possibly get into his car. What sick perverted man would do something like this is beyond my knowledge, but it happens every day. Yet I still am amazed at the selfishness of parents who would put something that could potentially endanger their child’s well being.
I’m reminded of a safety video I had to watch at an old job. The video discussed such things as workplace safety, how to lift properly, how to avoid danger from angry customers, etc. One part of the video touched on a topic about walking to your vehicle at night time after work, and discussed how you should not leave something inside your vehicle, in plain sight, that could identify you, such as a piece of mail with your name on it. Then the video proceeded to show a reenactment of a man stalking a lady who was walking to her car, and called her by her first name, which tricked her into letting down her guard. You would think something like this would be common sense to the majority of people, but again, I’m shocked at the amount of drivers out there that don’t know the danger they are putting themselves and their family into.
Thanks to http://www.customlabels4u.com for letting me use their image.
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Me and my wife were just talking about the SAME THING the other day..They may not be “selfish”, but they are certainly not too smart about their kids’ safety.