“Trapped!”

Defending Yourself From Inside Your Vehicle

By Jack Pettengill

When I was 18 years old, I liked to go “cruising” downtown with my friends.  For those of you that don’t know, “cruising” is driving slowly bumper to bumper up and down the main drag of your hometown on Friday and Saturday nights.  In the years before the internet & cell phones, this was one of the ways that teens networked.  Both sides of the street for at least a mile were slow moving cars full of my school friends, possible new girlfriends, and people I just knew.  Unfortunately, the bullies and other troublemakers were often out there, too.  Most of the time it was just harmless fun, but occasionally there were the typical sorts of incidents that happen when massive groups of teens get together in one place. 

On one particular summer night in 1989, I had been driving with my two best friends in my black 82 Camaro. (Oh, yeah – with “T” Tops!)  Around midnight I dropped my friends off and should have gone home myself, but I was still feeling the thrill of a cool car in the summer night and decided to make a couple more laps downtown on my own.  Unknown to me at the time, three local bullies (who didn’t like me because I had stood up to them in public a few weeks before) had spotted me earlier and had begun tailing me. During my last run through town, traffic came to a very common gridlock.  In that instant, I caught a flicker in my rearview mirror of something moving behind my car.  As I looked left to see what it was – WHAM!  I was repeatedly struck on the left side of my head around my left eye and blacked out for a few seconds.  I painfully awoke to find myself, my clothes, and my driver’s seat quite bloody – and had a lot of people staring at me.  The morning after my ER visit, where I received ten stitches, I became very serious about self defense training.  To this day, I still have a pretty thick scar reminding me of how vulnerable to attack I was in my own car.

Fortunately for me, I was only attacked by bullies looking for revenge.  Through my martial arts career I always come back to how much more serious my injuries could have been if this experience had been something much more serious such as a carjacking or a robbery.  This realization has inspired me to research, develop, and train self defense techniques for being inside or around one’s vehicle.  

All self defense students are taught to never get into a tight spot.  Yet every time you get into a vehicle, you are willingly putting yourself in a tight spot.  It’s great if you are in motion, but if you are stopped or parked for any time span, you can leave yourself quite vulnerable to attack.

As with all self defense training, the best tactic is planning ahead and using common sense.  Make every effort to solve any possible problems before they come up. 

1. KNOW YOUR VEHICLE

This doesn’t just mean the vehicle you own, but any vehicle you happen to be driving at the time.  Do the locks engage when the shifter is in drive?  If not, you should manually lock the doors.  Where is the unlocking button on the seat belt? On the top?  On the front?  Can you disengage it with one hand? Where are the inside door handles?  Which way do you have to pull them?  Does the vehicle shut down if the air bag has activated?  Does the key fit into the steering column or straight into the dashboard?  These things may seem inconsequential, but when you have only seconds to react to an attack, knowing where things are can make all the difference.

2. KNOW THE AREA

We can not always know exactly where we are, especially if we are driving somewhere we’ve never been.  In this instance, plan ahead based on what you currently DO know.  Pay attention to where the 24 hour businesses are that you have recently PASSED.  You may need to get there in a hurry, therefore DO NOT GUESS on a location based on a billboard or your GPS.

3. DON’T COUNT 100% ON TECHNOLOGY

The best technology you have is your brain.  Use it. Feel free to use your cell phone, On Star, GPS, etc. if you have it, but don’t rely on technology so much that you lose sight of where you are.  Technology can malfunction and/or lose signal and then you’re stuck with just your brain again.  Make sure you continue to maintain awareness of your surroundings.

4. KEEP YOURSELF WELL TRAINED

As with anything you learn to do, training (practice) is everything.  Continue to practice something over and over and eventually you can perform it without thinking.

Practical self defense techniques can be quite useful.  However, they need to be programmed and practiced for them to be instinctive.  The body has to physically repeat an action anywhere between 25 – 30 times before it BEGINS to become reactionary.  Fifty repetitions solidifies it more; one million repetitions solidifies it even more.  The brain needs the same kind of training.  It needs to repeatedly visualize the attacker and the attack in order to help the body program itself how to respond.

To illustrate this point, pretend you are driving in England. Could you remember to stay on the left side of the road, even in an emergency?  What about a stick shift?  Even if you were already familiar with working the clutch, gas, and brake, could you work the shifter with your left hand as easily as you would with your right?  If you had only done it a few times, the answer is no.  However, with time and repetition eventually you could perform these actions without thinking.  Remember, the body needs to continuously repeat an action to develop the muscle memory it needs to be able to carry out the physical defense tactics in an emergency.

While traveling by car, always try to have a plan.  Play a game with yourself called “What would I do if..?” but use the following guideline: if things have gotten physical, you missed several warning signs.  More often than not, this proves to be true.  Sometimes we ignore our “gut feelings” because if it turns out to be nothing, it might cause us a few seconds of embarrassment or ridicule from others.  But gut feelings are not magical impulses.  They are details observed on a subconscious level that can fill the gaps when our observations on a conscious level don’t add up.  Don’t be paranoid, but pay attention to what your gut feelings tell you.

Pre-planning and training are always better than a situation escalating to a physical level.  Odds are if things have gotten to that point, you will have less than an instant to react and there will be no second chance if you mess up.  However, there may be those times when you haven’t paid attention or luck just isn’t on your side that day.  If so, the following techniques will give the broad strokes of what you have available to you when attacked while inside your vehicle.  These are just basic techniques designed to get you to think.  Defending yourself in a vehicle has multiple scenarios and can become a specialized form of training in itself.  For instance, in addition to the attacker having surprise on his side, he is likely more mobile than you, may have a weapon, or may have accomplices.  You may be alone or have multiple passengers.  All of these situations will affect the way you handle an attack.

Keep in mind that since you are not as mobile in your vehicle as you would be on foot, the main goal is to neutralize the threat long enough to start the engine and drive away.  If you have made the decision to exit the vehicle, KNOW YOUR AREA, make a decision on where you are running, and GET THERE NOW!

INSIDE THE VEHICLE

TECHNIQUE #1  You are in your vehicle with the engine off

Subject approaches the driver’s side window and points a gun at you demanding money, your vehicle, etc.

1. With your left hand, grab the attacker’s gun hand or the barrel of the gun (pushing toward the windshield) with enough force to cause the attacker’s forearm to strike against the driver’s side door post at the dashboard.  This action also directs the barrel of the gun away from all other passengers in the car. 
2. Lean your left shoulder forward toward attacker’s trapped arm and with your right hand, grab the underside of the gun barrel and rotate it Counter Clockwise until it breaks free from the attacker’s grip.  Make sure the barrel never points in your direction.
3. Toss the gun aside to the front passenger seat or give it to the front passenger (if you have one) to use in defense.  Do not let go of attacker! If you continue to pin his right arm, he cannot use his left against you.  Also he cannot kick you as the door is in his way.
4. While still holding the attacker’s right arm, start the engine, shift into drive, and accelerate.  Position your right hand at 3:00 on the steering wheel.
5. Release attacker when the vehicle exceeds his running pace.  If attacker tries to hang on, sharply swerve from left to right to shake him off.  Execute all of these steps as quickly as possible – He may have more than one weapon or there may be more than one attacker!

TECHNIQUE #2  You are in your running vehicle in Park (Stop Sign, Traffic Jam, Parking Lot, Etc.)

Subject approaches the driver’s side window and points a gun at you demanding money, your vehicle, etc.

1. With your left hand, grab the attacker’s gun hand or the barrel of the gun (pushing toward the windshield) with enough force to cause the attacker’s forearm to strike against the driver’s side door post at the dashboard.  This action also directs the barrel of the gun away from all other passengers in the car. 
2. Shift into drive, and accelerate.
3. Release attacker when the vehicle exceeds his running pace. If attacker tries to hang on, sharply swerve from left to right to shake him off.  Execute all of these steps as quickly as possible – He may have more than one weapon or there may be more than one attacker!

TECHNIQUE #3  Attacker is trying to pull you through the window

Attacker has you by the hair, head, arm, etc. and is trying to extract you through the window.

If you have decided not to cooperate, the most important thing here is to keep yourself rigid.  Extend and lock your limbs in different directions to make yourself too awkward to fit through the window.  The most important limb to lock is the left leg.  Force your leg against the door and your left foot into the firewall at the floorboard.

1. You need to fight back, but don’t lean out the window in doing so.  With both hands, try to grab the attacker’s arm, or clothing at the arm or shoulder.
2. Keeping your left foot braced against the firewall, heave the attacker into the driver’s door.  Hopefully, his impact with the car will cause him some injury.  If not, it has still knocked him off balance and taken him by surprise.
3. Hold on to him with your right hand and deliver repeated reverse elbows to attacker (motion is the same as if you were starting a lawnmower with your left arm)
4. Wrap your left arm around attacker’s arm so your right hand is free to work the controls.
5. With your right hand, start the engine, shift into drive, and accelerate.  Position your right hand at 3:00 on the steering wheel.
6. Release attacker when the vehicle exceeds his running pace.  If attacker tries to hang on, sharply swerve from left to right to shake him off.  Execute all of these steps as quickly as possible – He may have more than one weapon or there may be more than one attacker!

The above techniques will also work when in the front passenger seat (mirror opposite for arm / leg positions, etc.) but it becomes a team effort.  The only difference is that once you have control of the attacker and/or weapon, yell to the driver “DRIVE ! DRIVE ! DRIVE!  Do not yell “GO! GO! GO!” because this may confuse the driver into thinking he/she needs to exit the vehicle and run away.

TECHNIQUE #4  Attacker enters the vehicle through the rear passenger door.

Attacker has entered the vehicle and is holding a gun to the back or right side of your head.

NOTE: This is an extremely horrible position to find yourself in as you may be ordered at gunpoint to put the vehicle in motion.  All the more reason to lock your doors immediately when you enter a car.

1. As your hands come up to say “I surrender,” turn your right palm around and grab the barrel of attacker’s gun and pull down away from your lap toward dashboard. 
2. Left hand immediately reaches toward attacker’s face and finger stabs his eyes.  Left hand then grabs attacker’s gun hand at the wrist.
3. Right hand pries gun out by rotating the barrel toward the car roof. (Either hang on to the gun as a possible impact weapon, or toss it down out of his reach)
4. While still hanging on with left hand, hit attacker with right rear elbow strikes.  (This will occupy him long enough for you to escape.)
5. Immediately exit the vehicle anywhere you can and run away from the scene.

Any improvised weapons can also give you an advantage.  Pens and pencils can stab just as easily as knives; cell phones have hard surfaces to strike with;  purses usually yield multiple hard as well as pointy objects (compact, nail file);  but all vehicles have one standard item in particular that is easily reached and makes a great impact weapon – the rearview mirror.  It breaks off the mounting stem with very little effort, can be gripped easily, and is hard enough to cause severe damage.

Hopefully, neither you nor anyone you know will have to utilize any of this information but, like a first aid kit, it will be there when you need it.  Remember, having a mental plan is excellent strategy, but only achieves about half of the goal.  Training your body how to react is just as important.