Staying safe is a topic people can discuss endlessly. And indeed, some do. You can search online and find all sorts of blog posts and informational articles offering tip after tip on staying safe. This post will even discuss the topic in some detail. But here is something to think about: sometimes, staying safe can be so obvious that we miss it.
Has anyone ever accused you of not being able to see the hand in front of your face? If so, the accusation was meant to point out that you were not seeing something obvious to everyone else. Such is often the case when it comes to personal safety.
Making It Look like You Are Home
One of the most thoroughly discussed suggestions for preventing burglary is to make it look like you are home, even when you are not. It is one of the tips Vivint Smart Home discussed in a recent post covering 2023 burglary statistics. Vivint isn’t the first or last entity to suggest making your home look lived in.
When you step back and think about it, do you really need someone to tell you that? Doesn’t it just make sense? Though it is true some burglaries occur with people still inside the home, such burglaries are not the norm. Burglars tend to prefer unoccupied homes because they are less risky. So of course you would want to make it look like someone is home while you’re away. It is just obvious.
Locking Your Car Doors at Night
Keeping with the home security theme, another common tip is to lock your car doors at night. The idea is that an unlocked car is a lot easier to burglarize in a locked one. So when you come home at the end of the day, you protect your car by locking the doors.
Once again, isn’t this obvious? Anyone who has locked himself out of his own car knows that it’s a lot easier to get in when the doors are unlocked. It doesn’t take a college degree to know that locked doors are harder to breach. And yet, so many people leave their car doors unlocked that it’s almost hard to comprehend.
Obvious Issues and Simple Solutions
Perhaps one of the reasons we miss such obvious things is that our minds don’t do well with simple solutions. We would rather delve into 25 ways to prevent home burglary than admit to a simple solution like making our homes looked lived in. We would rather discuss why burglars break into cars and face the simple fact that keeping the doors locked is the best way to prevent burglary.
Simple solutions to obvious issues frighten us. We sometimes have trouble believing that simple solutions are effective. But they are more often than not. Human beings tend to unnecessarily complicate things when simplicity would do so much better. I don’t know why. I just know it is true.
Assess Your Own Level of Safety
If you really want to maximize safety, the first step is to assess your current level. You need to step back and look at everything. Not only that, but you also can’t ignore the obvious. Always looking for the hidden things without an eye on the obvious only opens the door to unsafe decisions.
Sometimes, safety is so obvious that we miss it. From preventing burglary to avoiding activities that could pose a high risk for fire, we let the obvious go right over our heads in the search for more complicated things. It is one of those natural human tendencies that I find difficult to understand.