Find out why a personal safety expert believes a full grown woman would accept a ride from a stranger in perfect weather.
It keeps happening: Woman accepting rides from strangers even though the weather is beautiful, her destination isn’t too far off, and she’s not in pain or injured.
I’ll be honest: I’m nothing short of alarmed, and maddened, that so many women continue accepting rides from strangers even though:
1) Over the past decade there’s been an explosion of media attention on the dangers of this practice, including women found murdered by the stranger-man whose car she had voluntarily gotten into, and 2) These women had a perfectly good pair of legs to get them to their destination.
Why do grown women voluntarily get into cars with strangers?
I asked this to Robert Siciliano, CEO of Safr.Me.com and an expert in fraud prevention and personal safety.
When I say “stranger,” I mean a driver who pulls up alongside the pedestrian woman — a man she’s never seen before, as well as someone she “just met” at a bar.
“There is a certain rebellious thrill that is achieved by getting into a stranger’s vehicle,” says Siciliano. “There is also the ‘It can’t happen to me’ syndrome that some have.”
This points to lack of impulse control. Though this doesn’t apply to EVERY woman who accepts a ride from a stranger, it seems to explain it for some of them. Natalee Holloway comes to mind!
A transcript excerpt from the Dec. 24, 2010 airing of “Nancy Grace” reads:
Police say some of her classmates asked her to leave with them [from the bar], but she chose to get in a car with three young men, all locals.
What?!
What could possibly compel a grown woman (Holloway was 18) to get into a car with not one, but three strangers?
“All locals” means yes, they were very much strangers — even if she had chatted a little with them at the bar beforehand. And three of them!
“I’ve encountered many young woman over the years who have done this,” says Siciliano, referring to women taking rides from strangers, and “with the majority nothing happens. Some are victimized and others engaged in consensual sex.”
Yes, the majority live to tell about it. But it’s Russian roulette. What percent of women, who get into a stranger’s car, survive the experience without being victimized? This percentage is not known.
However, here’s the thing:
Getting into a car with a stranger is an extremely elective process, even if it’s raining.
By the time the stranger offers a woman a ride who’s walking in the rain, she’s probably as wet as she’ll get.
The vast majority of woman who are offered rides by strangers are not limping or bleeding profusely, nor is the temperature 17 degrees or 105 degrees.
It takes absolutely NOTHING to avoid being in that percentage of women who end up murdered by the driver. Simply keep on walking!
Tell the driver you’d rather walk, and make your announcement with authority. How hard is that? If you can’t speak with authority, then keep walking anyways!
Some women in these circumstances, says Siciliano, have the same mindset as a risk-taking young man:
“This is no different than an 18 year old boy getting in a car or on a motorcycle and doing 120 miles per hour. I’ve done it.”
Rational thought is when the woman pedestrian, upon being approached by that car with a nice-looking fellow inside offering her a ride, wonders if sitting in a stranger’s car could really be more comfortable than a planned (or even unplanned) walk.
After all, what if the guy’s car is a mess and stinks?
What if he has foul breath or awful body odor? What if he has so much cologne on it will gag her once inside the vehicle?
She can’t tell any of that from outside the car. What if he expects her to be a dazzling conversationalist or keeps talking about his grandmother’s hemorrhoid surgery or won’t stop telling racist jokes? Or … what if he wants to rape her?
Doggone it, don’t these things course through a woman’s mind upon being offered a ride by a stranger?
“Emotion and impulse often fly in the face of rational thought,” says Siciliano. “We know something is bad, or not good for us, but we do it anyway. Maybe we think the consequences aren’t all that detrimental or we think ‘It can’t happen to us.’ We generally have plenty of information to make well-informed decisions, but sometimes impulse gets the best of us.”
The prospect of the bad breath alone should be enough to motivate a woman to say NO THANK YOU to a stranger offering a ride.
Robert Siciliano is a private investigator fiercely committed to informing, educating and empowering people to protect themselves and their loved-ones from violence and crime — both in their physical and virtual interactions.
Lorra Garrick has been covering medical, fitness and cybersecurity topics for many years, having written thousands of articles for print magazines and websites, including as a ghostwriter. She’s also a former ACE-certified personal trainer.
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