Other security notes, useful for all but especially for women -- who male predators consider easy targets:

1) situational awareness -- you don't have it if you're concentrating on a phone call or are listening to your i-Pod.

2) if walking, jogging or biking alone -- make sure you let someone know where you are going, when you are going, and when you expect to be back. And touch base with them when you are back. A friend of mine lives out in the 'burbs and during the week wants to walk in a park. If going alone, she e-mails me before and after.

3) carry pepper spray and a whistle. Have the pepper spray in your hand or quickly accessible. When hiking I have a canister of bear spray in a holster on my backpack's hip belt. When walking my dog I have pepper spray clipped to a small shoulder bag which also holds Gidget's poop bags and my cell phone. In both instances, a Fox-40 whistle is on a chain around my neck (along with Doug Ritter's e-PICO light). The pepper spray is also to protect my dog from other off-leash dogs.

4) lock your car doors before putting the key in the ignition.

5) Have self-defense within reach in your car. I have a few items within reach of the driver's seat -- including pepper spray in a drink holder. Other items: hickory "tire knocker," large wrench (which is for my trailer hitch but also a formidable weapon at close range) and a baseball bat (legal everywhere that I know of -- baseball being "America's past-time" and all). I live in Washington, D.C. where carrying loaded weapons is strictly verbotten and even possessing them in your home is strictly regulated.

Again a personal experience impressed on me how important it is to not be defenseless in the car. A few years ago, I had a Mazda Miata (a diminutive vehicle, to say the least) and had pulled in behind a taxi-cab on my way home. About a half-block later while crossing an interesection the taxi stopped, leaving me sitting in the intersection. At first I thought he was going to pick up a fare as people were standing on the corner, but then he got out of his car and walked back toward me. I then assumed his car had broken down. He approached my window, which I obligingly rolled down. He then berated me to "stop following" him as he alleged that I had been tailing him for miles. It was a bizarre harangue, to say the least. It's not like my Miata looked like an undercover FBI vehicle, and I had only been behind him for barely half a block. But I sat there, a sitting duck -- cars behind me, to the side and in front. Fortunately, he was content with the verbal abuse and got back into his car. Now if that happened I'd have pepper spray in one hand, my hand rolling up the window with the other and cell phone on hands-free for 911. You just never know.