Ways to Hide Your Valuables

From Bottom Line/Personal, January 15, 2007

Kevin Coffey with Corporate Travel Safety says “Most burglars like to get in and out of homes quickly. They will focus on closets and drawers and under mattresses. Their favorite targets include cash, jewelry, checkbooks, credit cards, handguns, cameras and laptop computers.

The safest place to keep valuables is in a safe-deposit box or a safe built into the wall or the floor of your home. If you decide to use another location, let a trusted relative know about your hiding spot or put a note in your safe-deposit box describing the location. Otherwise, your valuables could be lost if you pass away or forget where they’re hidden.”

DO-IT-YOURSELF “SAFES”

These hiding spots will take a bit more time and effort to construct. They might be worth the trouble if you have basic carpentry skills and you keep a significant amount of valuables in your home. Some are best for small items, such as jewelry. Others can hide larger items, such as a laptop computer.

Posts of a poster bed. The tops of the bedposts usually unscrew. Take the tops off, drill down into the wood posts to create hiding spaces for valuables (be careful not to drill into the grooves where the top screws in).

Fake pipe, vent or electrical outlet. Add an unnecessary pipe or duct among the real pipes and ducts in your attic, basement, laundry room or kitchen, and store valuables inside. This pipe or duct should look as if it is part of the home’s plumbing or heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system.

Or use a phony electrical outlet or vent to provide access to valuables hidden in the wall. The fake outlet or vent should match the color and style of the real outlets or vents in your home.

Below a bookcase. The lowest shelf of a wooden bookcase often is a few inches above the floor. Turn the space below into a hiding area large enough for even a laptop computer by cutting a secret door into the wood facing.

Hang-Up-and-Drive Bill

Legislation banning the use of hand-held cellphones while driving goes into effect in 2008.
By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer, September 15, 2006

SACRAMENTO — California will become the fourth state in the country to ban motorists from holding cellphones while driving under legislation Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he will sign into law today.

The governor's office said Thursday that the signing will take place in Oakland, ending a five-year campaign by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) to outlaw one of the most common distractions of California drivers.

Under the law, which will take effect in July 2008, Californians risk a minimum $20 fine for driving while yakking into a phone — unless they are using a headset, speaker phone, ear bud or some other technology that frees both hands while they talk. Drivers in emergency situations would be exempt.

"Public safety is the governor's No. 1 priority," said Schwarzenegger spokeswoman Margita Thompson, "and this bill will make the streets and highways of California safer by ensuring that drivers have both hands available for driving."

The bill passed both legislative bodies in late August — the Assembly 50-28, and the Senate 21-16. In both houses, the measure passed with largely Democratic support and the votes of a few Republicans.

Although 38 state legislatures considered bills to minimize driving distractions such as cellphones this year, only New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and the District of Columbia have banned drivers from using hand-held cellphones.

It took Simitian five attempts to get enough support in the Legislature to pass the bill, but Schwarzenegger warmed to the idea quickly.

…the only official opponent of the bill was the Sprint-Nextel cellular phone company…

Simitian argued that the traffic safety risk of cellphone use while driving is "measurable and significant." In a letter sent Monday to the governor, the senator pointed to academic research in the Accident Analysis and Prevention journal that concluded that the risk of death is nine times greater for drivers who use a cellphone while driving.

California Highway Patrol data from 2004 show police reports for 775 accidents in which a driver at fault was using a hand-held cellphone.

There were only 28 reports of accidents in which drivers using hands-free phones were to blame. Preliminary data from last year show a similar pattern.

"When you're on your cellphone," wrote Simitian, "you are distracted at three different levels: aurally, visually and mentally. But what the hands-free requirement can and does accomplish is that … you will have both hands free to control the vehicle during those split seconds that make the difference between life and death."

No Breathing Space Can be Deadly

Study: Sleepy doctors a liability for hospitals

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) -- A study cited early last year reveals that “overworked, sleepy doctors-in-training who hit the road after work are as much a hazard as drunk drivers, a finding that could unleash a wave of lawsuits against U.S. hospitals…”

“According to a study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, medical interns who worked shifts lasting 24 hours or more were twice as likely to be involved in serious crashes after work than doctors who put in fewer hours. Just as bartenders are now being held liable for accidents caused by drunk customers, hospitals, which routinely schedule interns to work double, triple or quadruple shifts, may soon find themselves sued for motor vehicle accidents caused by exhausted staff, one of the researchers said.”

"The medical profession should be a leader in accident prevention, yet it's requiring its medical trainees to work marathon shifts and lets them drive home in this impaired condition in which they're unfit to drive," said Harvard Medical School's Charles Czeisler, a sleep expert. "That's akin to letting someone get behind the wheel when you know they're drunk."

Despite years of research showing sleep-deprived workers are more prone to errors, the U.S. medical community has been slow to cut back on trainees' hours. The European Union has imposed a 13-hour limit on daily shifts for physicians, with some exceptions.

Cell Phones Banned in Banks

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, Ill., Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Cell phones have been banned inside the five branches of the First National Bank in the Chicago area, to enhance security. Even using a cell phone in the bank's lobby may result in the person being asked to leave the premises.

"We ban cell phone use in the lobby because you don't know what people are doing," Ralph Oster, a senior vice president, told the Chicago Tribune. Cell phone cameras are also a worry. Oster said there have been holdups in which bandits were on the phone with lookouts outside while committing bank robberies.

"You're trying to stop that communication," he says. Banks in Mexico City banned call phones in May and Citizens Financial Bank of Munster, Ind., asks customers to turn off their cell phones. West Suburban Bank, based in Lombard, Ill., barred customers wearing hats in January but has not moved to silence cell phones.

Cell Phone and Driving

No amount of mitigation will diminish the reality that driving and talking on the phone is not as safe as simply driving. The vendors of cell phones and other vehicle gadgetry will argue that speaking to others in the car, listening to the radio, or engaging in other such behavior is equally hazardous. This is not true in any respect because of a concept known as sharp attention.

You can only give your sharp attention in one basic direction. Listening to the radio or CD, or speaking with someone in the passenger seat does not pose the same risk. The reason is that your sharp attention can continue to be on the road, and as practical, you can give some attention to the radio, CD, and the passenger in the seat next to you. However, at any given moment, your driving takes precedence.

This is not the case with the use of the cell phone — concentrating on the conversation on someone at a distance and driving compete with one and another. If activist state legislators get their wishes, people who hold a cell phone to their ear while driving may soon find themselves talking to a judge. That's the message that could come from more and more states considering legislation that would ban the use of handheld, wireless phones while operating an automobile.

The legislative efforts come in response to an increase in cell phone use while driving, hands free or not, which some politicians say has led to more vehicle accidents. Momentum for this cause has been building ever since The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in February, 1997, titled: "The Association of Cell Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions." The article concluded that drivers talking on a cell phone are four times more likely to get into car accidents than those who aren't, and they are 11 times likely to die in an accident.

Multitasking in your car is not pretty. The message for readers: do not use a cell phone in your vehicle when the engine is on, and minimize conversation time with those who make such calls to you.