Stopping in two rest areas in Bavaria, I see this type of sign:
Apparently these signs are a measure to encourage female safety in car parks. However, there is no evidence that there is more or less assault in German car parks than in any other country. Furthermore, the main reason for these signs, namely that more women are assaulted in car parks than men, seems to me entirely specious, given that more women are assaulted than men full stop. According to the Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik 2007, 94.4% of all 40,333 'Straftaten gegen die sexuelle Selbstbestimmung' were committed by men, who also committed 99% of all 6,456 instances of rape. Women represented 95.8% of all victims in these cases.
Germany is by no means one of the worst countries, coming in at #24 with 9 rapes/100,000 people, behind the UK at #13 with 14/100,000, the US at #9 with 30/100,000 and South Africa's unbelievable 119/100,000. One has to bear in mind that these are only reported statistics. Actual figures can be much higher: according to a sign I once saw at Johannesburg airport, a woman is raped every 30 seconds there alone.
Even when you throw extra CCTV and alarm buttons into the mix, these signs seem to be a very ineffective way of combatting a problem that is far wider spread than motorway service stations.
Meanwhile, to return to a somewhat lighter note... In this delightful post-feminist/male chauvinist world of ours, these signs have been healthily mocked. I would hope that this has arisen out of an appreciation of the silliness these signs represent, but I fear that this hope is misplaced. In any case, I include a few examples:
And all this when I was just stopping for a Red Bull...
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