When Safety Measures Don't Make Sense

What safety measures make sense in the aftermath of a tragedy such as the Boston Marathon bombings?

I'm not sure. But I am positive it's not the advice below, which was posted on Facebook, apparently by someone who was interviewed by a news show shortly after the horrific event:

"If you love your kids, don't bring them into large crowds at high profile events. Yes, it stinks that you have to make these kinds of choices, but the reality is that there are a lot of bad people out there. If you want to see the action, watch it on TV from the safety of your home. Thank you, (local TV station), for helping me spread the word. Safety is not always convenient."

Wow. Talk about less than worthless blather — and blame.

First of all, if we are not supposed to bring our children to large crowds, should we leave them at home while we threaten our own lives by attending a concert or parade? After all, if it's true that anytime our kids are in public they could be blown up, doesn't that hold true for the rest of us, too?

And does that mean parents should never take their kids to Disneyland? Talk about crowds! I guess it's just luck or vigilance that has prevented Disneyland from being blown up.

Unless ... maybe it's something else.

Indeed it is. Security guru Bruce Schneier — the guy who coined the term "security theater" — nailed it in an interview in The Washington Post. He was asked why he seemed so skeptical about trying to create new laws or procedures to keep us safe from terrorism. After all, the interviewer said, doesn't "the relative safety of the last few years suggest that our post-9/11 policies have actually worked?"

To which Schneier responded: "The problem with rare events is that you can't make those sorts of assessments.

I remember then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking two years after 9/11. He said that the lack of a repeat event was proof that his policies worked. But there were no terrorist attacks in the two years before 9/11, and he didn't have any policies in place. What does that prove? It proves that terrorist attacks are rare."

It also proves the fact that it's hard to prove a negative. Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean that any security measures "worked." This is the argument I always am burbling when folks feel that the only reason their kids have not been kidnapped is they never let them out of their sight.

Terrorist attacks — like kidnappings — are dramatic and searing, but they are also so rare and unpredictable that they don't deserve much weight in making our "safety" decisions. Trying to plan our lives around them is like planning a trip to Florida solely around how to avoid shark attacks. Do that and you'd spend your whole beach vacation avoiding the water.

You return home, your whole family uneaten by sharks — just like everyone else on the plane. Except they spent their vacation frolicking in the ocean. Is the difference between your 100 percent safety and their 99.999999 percent worth living life in constant terror?

Now think of that advice on Facebook: "If you love your kids, don't bring them into large crowds." Are kids who never go to a ballgame safer than those who do? Or course not.

It's hard to stay rational in the face of a terrifying tragedy. But it doesn't make us any safer to batten down the hatches and distrust the world as if our very lives depended on it.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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