What can you do to prevent trouble, avoid trouble, or help the injured?
PREVENT OR AVOID ACCIDENTS OR BOTH?
Prevention and avoidance are different. To prevent means to go before (pre) and turn away trouble. To avoid means not going to something or some trouble already there. People often confuse the two words. But there is a big difference.
To prevent an accident you could slow down or put up slow down signs, improve the road, impose a speed limit. Take precautions. You can cause or prevent something from happening.
To avoid an accident you could take a diversion routing away from the traffic jam and the accident.
If you can't avoid it, you are stuck in the jam, witness it, or you are stuck nearby waiting.
Avoiding travelling
Americans are avoiding travelling overseas. Preventing themselves being on planes. Visitors to the UK from America in early December 2015 said their planes had about 160 seats filled in a plane seating about 300, which would usually be increasingly full in the days leading towards the Christmas holidays.
TEMPTING LOW PRICES
If you are courageous or phlegmatic, prices of airlines and hotels may come down in a keen marketing attempt to obtain more business, or a bigger share of the little available, or reluctant obligation because they have no choice.In London in previous years, hotels and restaurants were going out of business.
Why are prices lower?
Hotels lowered prices because they needed to do so. Hotels were the worst struck because they relied on foreigners coming in. Although Americans were a small percentage, they were the big spenders. Business people are often risk takers but had to cancel for insurance reasons.
Elderly Americans with time to travel and no families were the ones who had taken the expensive hotel suites. The older travellers were thinking now or never. The 50 and 60 plus were the main travellers. (More than the 70 year olds, fewer of them left. A UK study by Saga found this long ago, in fact their discovery led to the creation of their company. The seventies and older are in poorer health and have done their travelling. They also spent their retirement handout in their sixties. Result, a hotel loses only two bookings out of 100 rooms, but these two lost bookings are the £100 or £200 suites, and ten percent loss of income is the difference between profit and loss, cash flow problem.
So, price wise it is a good time to travel if you are courageous / foolhardy / phlegmatic.
CHECK GOVERNMENT WARNINGS
If your government issues a do not travel warming many forms of transport will cancel because of lack of demand or perceived heightened danger and they cannot get insurance and companies could be sued for sending staff into danger without insurance or ignoring public warnings.
MESSAGE SYSTEMS
In Asia in previous years a system of linked messages was set up. In case of any emergency such a tsunami or attack, certain people had the phone numbers of everybody in the group (embassies, schools, American nationals working in the city) and called them all by phone personally or sent out a mass mailing or mail shot to get everybody to a collection point, or into hiding.
EVACUATION
A system of relays was organised to get people on unmarked buses and vehicles along designated roads or off road cross-country routes leading to airports or sea ports for evacuation. A system of vehicles for emergency evacuation was also organised.You need a passport or copy of it so you body can be identified or you can get onto an evacuation vehicle.
EMERGENCY BAG
In Japan and the USA and other earthquake prone areas, the family has an emergency bag by the door; so if you have to run out in a hurry, you don't race around a collapsing building trying to find your passport or go back for your water bottle. The emergency bag contains photocopies of documents, identity, insurance, numbers to call for help, family contacts, food and water and first aid.
You can also make yourself a similar kit for travelling, then keep it in your hand luggage. When you evacuate a plane you should not delay others by stopping to reach into overhead lockers or block aisles with your luggage. You just run for the exit. Seconds count.
You want to be out of a crashed car on a motorway. The same goes for an aircraft which had crashed - get out before it explodes. In the dark you might so the right thing and run for the exit without your bag. Good. But you need your emergency kit in your pockets - your credit cards and something to eat. Chocolate, nuts - I am against forbidding nuts on planes. At least have nuts in unopened packets or tins or sealed in Tupperware type containers. Then you have a source of protein.
Imagine being stuck on a motorway for hours. Just a traffic jam. In a snow drift. Anywhere, waiting for reduce. Trapped under a collapsed buildings.
You could avoid travelling to major malls, stadiums, public events, restaurants and cafes and shops and stay home.
If you are that type. Others insist 'I'm not changing my life.' Or, 'If you change your life, you've let them win.'
ATTITUDES
Reasons are:
People may go to two extremes, seeking danger or being reclusive to avoid it, taking a middle path, or oscillating pendulum like between extremes. You may find your family and friends follow some of the following systems. To keep out of danger, you may decide to identify what's happening and mix with like-minded people, or rely on your own judgement and preparation.
Adventure (people who go to war or join the armed forces); attention seeking (desire to be in the newspapers as a hero, victim, villain, whatever); bravery; carelessness, curiosity (I wonder what it will be like, where's the crowd going); defiance, duty, fatalism (if your number's on it/ what will be will be); happy go lucky nature; ignorance; loneliness (prefer to be with in danger in company than alone); observers (journalists, photographers, war correspondents seeking news and events to record); sheepishness (follow the crowd into danger like lemmings, run with the crowd away from danger in a panic like rabbits; stay with the crowd like Wildebeest hoping those on the outside will be caught but those in the centre will survive - safety in numbers); patriotism (my country, right or wrong); precaution (prepare for the worst but hope for the best - quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin); stoicism; suicidal - suicide by cop / can't cope - if they kill me at least I won't have to do my tax return.
SECURING POSSESSIONS
Credit cards /debit cards
DIVIDING CARDS
You could have one card at home, not in an empty house. You could leave your spare/emergency card with a family member at another address. Even sent by courier to a safe place.
One system is to have one card at home or with a friend.
Divide CARD and CLOTHES
Some people have half of each person's clothes in the other person's suitcase. Makes no difference if all your luggage goes missing. But if one suitcase out of two is lost, you both have clothes.
Similarly you can divide your cards. Or swap cards. If both of you have one of your cards and one of your partner's cards, if one of you is robbed or in an accident, the other person still has a working card.
DEBIT / LIMIT CARD
Take out a new debit card. Open a new account for travels with a small amount in that account.
Then if the card is lost the thieves can only remove the amount you allowed yourself for your weekend stay. You cannot overspend. You cannot have your entire savings wiped out by an online theft. Nor by a card robbery whilst travelling.
BAGS
Consider whether hard cases are safer than soft cases. Consider safety of vehicles you buy or hire. Consider safety of airport transfer. (eg hotel car ,rather than hire car, or shuttle bus?). Decide which is the safest option.
Bullet proof vests
You might try to get away from military people who are a target. Or stand behind the police so their bodies and body armour protect you.
You can buy these on the internet. If heavy, they could slow you down when running.
A policeman told me that a high power automatic can cut through a tree. Same goes for a machete. You need to be behind a concrete wall. And/or in a bullet proof vest.
Reading newspaper reports of survivors of events ranging from WWI to WWII to recent, I have read reports of people saved by
a) The bible (in effect a thick book might be like a block of wood deflecting bullet)
b) A phone deflecting a bullet (old phones in your pockets?)
c) Any metal shield
Insurance
Check your travel insurance. You might be covered for illness, sickness, injury repatriation. You might not. Some insurances excluded hooliganism or riot. Our insurance would not cover our car for damage from crowds or falling fireworks on New Year's eve in Europe. Out hotel advised us to park off the street, not outside the hotel in a busy street, but just for that one night in a car park, whatever the cost it would be less than the stress of damage to the car.
Knife proof vests
Live-saving
CODED MESSAGES
When travelling when your children are travelling away from you have a coded message. To prevent strangers picking children up from school saying they were sent by Mummy, tell them nobody should pick you up without the code word or phrase or name.
Plan a signal message for children. For example, 'you need to get back for your swimming lesson' might mean we must get away from this character trying to pick us up in the market, so follow me hold my hand and if and when I run, hold my hand and run with me.
DISTRACTION WITH WORDS
Simply shout 'behind you' or shout 'George' and look over somebody's shoulder then run.
Life Saving - Appealing for help
At a recent Toastmasters International meeting we were treated to a talk on getting help to save your life. A woman in New York was attacked over a period of hours and many people heard or walked past but took notice and didn't get help.
The moral is don't rely on anybody in general to help. They all assume it's somebody' else\s duty or if nobody else is acting I can't or should not. Appeal directly to one person by addressing them, looking them in the eye and telling them exactly what to do. For example, 'Help - old man - call the police!'
DISTRACTION WITH BOTTLES OR COINS
Whether you are a victim or a bystander trying to help, if you have nothing else, distract an assail by throwing bottles or coins, ideally at their head or eyes so they blink and give the victim(s) a chance to run.
Apart from major incidents, there are a few nutters about, plus belligerent drunks. Keep well behind the yellow lines on station platforms when waiting for trains.
Putting yourself in danger, by climbing a mountain peak without taking safety gear, proper clothes and shoes, a charged phone, a GPS device, could put colleagues or rescuers in danger. Same goes for chasing your dog into high waves.
Maybe you can be the hero of the day and save somebody else's life. Or as the saying goes, the life you save my be your own.
Wishing you safe and happy travelling
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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