FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Please do not lock your luggage
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Old Jan 24, 2003, 2:23 pm
  #23  
Buster
 
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: SW WA
Posts: 3,876
tsadude, I appreciate that you are here and sharing your views. I can't help but feel that your views, however, are quite cavalier when it comes to our concerns about leaving our luggage unlocked, so I will try to make my point clearer. Did I really think that my luggage locks would stop a determined thief? No. I liken the situation, however, to leaving my car in a parking lot. Will locking my doors and setting my car alarm really stop a thief who is determined to break into my car? Not at all. I've seen thieves jimmy door locks and disable car alarms in a matter of seconds. Do I think that locking my doors and setting the alarm is a sensible deterrent? Of course. I would be a fool to leave my car unlocked when it is unattended in a parking lot. The locks and alarm are intended to be a deterrent, and to potentially slow a thief down. Locking my car and having a visible alarm (ie: blinking red light in the case of my car) let a thief know that he's got a couple of hurdles, and maybe he would be better off breaking into the unlocked car w/o an alarm next to me.

I think of luggage locks as the same thing. My mother was a flight attendant for years. Thanks to her, I know that there are master keys for all kinds of locks, as well as ways to pop open combo locks. I also know, thanks to her, that locked luggage is less likely to be pilfered from or rifled through. Why? Because there are lots of unlocked bags out there. Why spend the time to break into a bag when you can simply unzip one. It's a deterrent, not a true preventative.

Locks also serve to let you know if something is off with your bag. I always put the locks on my bag in a certain way. I know that if my lock is gone, or put on in a different way, my bag has been tampered with. If I'm traveling somewhere like Singapore that has harsh penalties for drug smuggling, and my bag has been tampered with, I can go through my bag prior to hitting customs and make sure I'm clean. Again, it's not a perfect system or an absolute preventative.

We live in a world where small advantages can be meaningful. I know I'm never perfectly safe in my house even with the doors locked, and that my car is never truly safe even with the doors locked and the alarm on. But does that mean I should just throw my hands up in the air and stop doing those things? Certainly not. tsadude, certainly you don't leave your house unlocked when you're gone, and I assume that you lock your car doors. Why should luggage be any different? It seems like a prudent, common sense thing to do, and I think that's why people are so upset. We're not so naive as to think that our luggage is safe with locks on, but why NOT try to take the small measures we can to protect ourselves?

[edited to fix UBB coding]

[This message has been edited by Buster (edited 01-24-2003).]
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