I have a friend that was followed while walking home late one night. Luckily, she was aware of her surroundings and managed to duck into a parking lot to ditch the would-be assailant. She then called a friend to pick her up and made it home unharmed.
If she didn’t have her mobile phone with her, the story may have played out different.
The Safeti is a personal safety device that could help people in her situation. It’s designed to trigger a customizable alert that is automatically sent to emergency contacts and which includes your GPS location. It doesn’t require smartphone connectivity.
You can pre-order the Safeti via IndieGoGo for $89, which is a crowdfunding service similar to Kickstarter. Early birds can order one for $10 to $15 off. The Safeti is expected in August of 2015.
When the user clicks and holds the button on the Safeti , it is designed to automatically send a message to the people in a designated safety circle with a text message and a link to the person’s current location.
In a real emergency, the user will be able to click the button three times to notify a personal safety concierge. This person will talk you through the situation, giving you advice on where the nearest open convenience store or brightly lit street is.
If you don’t answer your phone when the personal concierge calls, the police will be contacted. The Safeti is designed to connect with nearby cell towers to provide police with a person’s location, even without a cell phone.
The device will come with four free calls from a personal safety concierge. Additional calls will require a small fee that is not determined at this time.
The personal safety concierge is part of an emerging industry that is still in its early stages. The few services that currently exist, like TotalTrack and Zomm, require a cell phone or smartphone in order to work.
The Safeti is the first stand-alone device of this type that I’ve seen which can send alerts even when it’s not connected to a smartphone.
combine this with a private security force, charge people a monthly fee and i think you got yourself a winner
This device is good to help the authorities retrieve the victim’s corpse. To prevent untimely death in the first place, krav maga, pepper spray and stun gun are more effective.
The idea is to be able to get in contact with someone that has immediate access to information on how to move into a safer environment. Sometimes, people don’t feel comfortable in a situation (like feeling like they are being followed), but don’t want to call the cops. A quick call from a personal security professional could quickly diffuse the possible danger, without making a huge ordeal out of it. Being someone that has worried about being followed home more than once, I think this is a fantastic idea.
I don’t know in which country you live, but here in the USA one can call 311 instead of 911 to reach the police for non-emergency situations. See this link:
https://www.lvmpd.com/FileaPoliceReport/WhentoCall311/tabid/89/Default.aspx
Another helpful point to this device is that you don’t need a phone in order for it to work.
This $89 device is essentially a very stripped down cellphone. For $89 you can buy not one but several spare full featured cellphones to take with you everywhere. Remember that a cellphone doesn’t need to be activated in order to call 911 in the USA, and that cellphones support the Enhanced 911 system that automatically provides location to the police dispatcher.
“personal safety concierge”. That’s kind of sad. I really hope this doesn’t catch on.
a gun is much better and more effective for self protection. these things are as useful as cellphones for protection, no very useful at all. when seconds count the police are minutes away, and so is your friend with a car.
Do yourself a favor, get a gun, learn how to use it and draw it quickly.
Yeah, every time I feel like someone might be following me I turn around and shoot them in the chest. Works every time.
Seriously, we have enough jumpy, frightened people afraid that every noise that we hear might be a murderer already. Let’s not make it worse by getting people shot who happen to be walking behind someone else going the same way. I guarantee you that many more innocent people would be shot than those that would be saved.
Safety alert systems seems to be a fairly established industry, with much of the focus on the elderly and for medical reasons, though much of it seems to be focused on home devices.
However, a quick Google found mobile systems like those at https://www.greatcall.com/products/greatcall-splash and https://www.mobilehelp.com/products.php .