An over reaction?

Over the last couple of weeks I've spent more time following the World Cup than the "other" news. However, stories such as this tragedy from Perth can still catch my attention occasionally. I also had the displeasure of being in a supermarket this morning which had some commercial radio station from somewhere going on with their usual "What is the world coming to?" rubbish (completely overlooking the fact that they themselves have often advocated similar "action" against virtually anyone they don't like). After their usual self-righteous spiel, they trotted out the old "Don't let your children leave the house" line.

Isn't this just a bit of an over reaction here? Granted, the story in question does involve someone committing a particularly gruesome act against a child, but what I don't understand is why something that happens relatively rarely can generate such fear in a community, yet things that happen far more often, and claim far more lives do not. I don't have any statistics at hand to confirm this, but for some reason, when a child is killed in a car crash on the way to school, it never seems to generate this sort of reaction. The media (and indeed the readers who puppet them) seem oblivious to this particular risk. Indeed, having seen the way parents drive when in the vicinity of schools, I'd say a goodly number of them are responsible for making it more of a problem than it needs to be.

Everyday most of us buy food from supermarkets which has been prepared and packaged by people we are unlikely to ever meet, and we show them complete faith by eating this food and feeding it to our children -- yet apparently we can't trust any of them to be left alone for a moment with a child.

More to the point, has anyone considered the possible adverse effects of this paranoia? I recall an incident on a Gold Coast beach a little while ago where a lifesaver who had just saved a child from drowning and resuscitated them was threatened with physical violence from a paranoid parent. Then there is the whole issue of child obesity which largely stems from people refusing to let a child leave the house, and instead letting the computer or TV raise them.

Granted, there are places where it's silly to leave a child unattended, and a busy shopping centre is probably one of them. However, it's equally silly to let such paranoia rule our lives from rare, isolated incidents. Surely it's better to simply learn what can be learned from this particular situation, and move on.