A Highway Code for Vulnerable Motorists
The fear of crime in today´s society can lead us to change and adapt our lifestyle in many ways. It can restrict our working and social life to such a degree, which may; if not checked becomes quite threatening.
Being involved in an incident or some form of attack whilst driving may influence some people into not using their vehicles as often as they may wish. However, if sensible and simple precautions are taken before and during any car journey, the risk of being involved in some form of threatening incident can be drastically reduced.
Newspaper and television reports can often increase the fear of violence by the reporting of any incident or attack involving motorists. This is not a criticism of the media, but it should show that because such incidents merit the attention of the press, the incident itself is newsworthy and not simply an everyday occurrence. If such incidents went unreported it would at least indicate that they were `commonplace´ and subsequently not worth reporting. The rarity of any event is often in relation to the amount of publicity given. In future, if you hear of any such incident, which may occur, don´t automatically assume that it is happening everywhere and that it will happen to you. Learn from the incident in order to ensure that you won´t become a victim of a similar incident. The time to be concerned is when such happenings are not reported as widely. This would usually indicate that they are `commonplace´ and an everyday occurrence. Then we should all be concerned.
If we look at the number of miles driven by motorists on all the various types of roads in this country and then compare this with the number of incidents other than road traffic accidents, which occur involving people driving alone. It shows that the chance of being involved in such an incident is very low indeed. This fact should go some way in reducing the fear of becoming a victim of this type of incident. Remember, not only females are vulnerable to intimidation, male drivers are also victims of incidents on the road.