>She will turn 17 in a couple of weeks. Today, no matter how good a driver she is, there will always be times when someone else drives in a manner that might leave her no options to avoid a collision. It happened to me 2 years ago. I was sitting at a red light when a senior citizen was talking on a cell phone and didn't notice the light was red and didn't see me sitting at the light and plowed into me at 45mph. The same holds true when out on your own in public. Young girls are targets and even with knowledge of self-defense, at 13, she was very small and slight and not capable of defending herself against everything and everyone. I guess because I have personal experience with abductions that I see it differently. I didn't want to put her into a position where she might need to defend herself at that age. In every town I have lived in recently, there have been abductions, knifings, and shootings either in or outside the mall. If she and a friend were together, then I would
>allow them to walk around together without me. It was an agreement I reached with the other girl's parents. Two girls make less of a target than one on her own. Not ideal, but they would have a better chance together. Riding the bus or walking to the mall was never an option because I have not lived where there was a public bus service for almost 20 years and the mall is too far away to walk to. When she was 14 she and her friend walked to the drugstore which was only a mile away at most and enroute they received so many catcalls they never did it again.

This all fits in with my comments somewhere upthread about evaluating the kid and the neighborhood. You've apparently been unfortunate enough to live in significantly more dangerous neighborhoods than I have (or flipping that around, I've been fortunate), so you've had to make different choices than I have.

Tamar