“Crimes of convenience” often occur not when victims do anything specific to entice thieves, retired Secret Service agent Scott Bryson tells his followers. In fact, it’s sometimes the opposite, meaning it’s what people aren’t doing that exposes them to risks like petty theft.  For example, he says, drivers who don’t have a certain good habit are way more likely to fall victim to vehicle crime.

A retired Secret Service agent’s vehicle safety tip is really just common sense

“I literally just saw this one minute ago,” Bryson starts. He was just sitting in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant.

The former Secret Service agent noticed a really nice Volvo SUV parked unoccupied. A purse sat on the right front seat. “My eyes went to the doors,” he recounts. “Locks sticking straight up.”

The car was unlocked with the purse in plain view.

Bryson explains that they live in a small town with low crime. However, “That’s not the point,” he asserts.

“You’ve got to have good habits.”

“Lock your doors,” he tells followers. “People aren’t walking around in broad daylight with hammers and breaking windows out.” Instead, they check car door handles. If it opens right up, “They snatch and grab.”

This reminds me of a colleague I had at a large insurance company I worked for after college. They also lived in a quiet area of Ohio. One morning on the way to the office, they parked a company-owned SUV at a gas station. They were shocked at what happened when they returned to the car: The vehicle got lifted without a trace. The corporate laptop was inside, too.

The colleague had made a common-sense mistake. They left the SUV unlocked with the key in the car. If my memory is right, I think it was actually running. The company eventually recovered the stolen vehicle, but it was the talk of the insurance office for a bit, there.

The retired Secret Service agent mentions muscle memory: If you just treat every drive cycle the same, meaning you remove or hide valuables and lock the car, you’re automatically lowering the risk of vehicle crime. “Be a hard target,” Bryson firmly recommends.