- guardian.co.uk, Thursday September 25 2008 00.01 BST
- The Guardian, Thursday September 25 2008
I am standing in a quiet London street, just off a busy market, and nobody is coming to help me. The personal attack alarm I have set off screeches away into a void of nothingness. Eventually, a man walks past on his mobile phone, glances in my direction and looks annoyed. A pigeon looks slightly alarmed. I could be dead by now, I think. Or maimed. Damn you fellow citizens. "Why didn't you come and see if I was OK?" I ask a stallholder on the market. "We get a lot of kids round here," Roman Sarlowaray says. "I thought it was one of them messing around."
The makers of the new Ila Dusk personal alarm, which goes on sale in Marks & Spencer next month, say that the noise it makes has been "shown to elicit the strongest reaction from passers by". Instead of the usual car-alarm noise, which people find easy to ignore, it is supposed to sound like a woman screaming. Except it doesn't. It sounds a bit like a baby crying, or a wounded animal.
"There is no point using an alarm to attract attention," says Jo Walker, spokeswoman for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the personal safety campaign group. "There may not be anyone around to help you. The main purpose of an alarm is to be like 'aural mace'. If you direct the alarm into an attacker's ear, it can make them slightly nauseous or dizzy and disorientated, giving you a few seconds to get away."
What does she think of an alarm which gives off the sound of a woman screaming? "We advise people to try not to scream, because bystanders have no idea how to react. You should shout instructions, such as, 'Call the police!' - it has been proven this has more of an effect."
The reactions I witness range from indifference to annoyance to, in the case of Karen Allen, an English teacher, laughter. Does she carry an alarm? "No. I'd just wallop them with my handbag."
