alt Hacker NewsPart of the way to think about it is that you simply can't control such events. We never could and we never will. Trying to do so is a losing game for temporary psychological comfort only. I think the key is that the "small things" that you do are unlikely to actually reduce the probability in practice.
Stranger kidnapping is an extreme black swan, but there’s plenty of more realistic scenarios where tracking could mitigate a bad outcome. Kid gets off the school bus at the wrong stop: found in minutes. Kid is riding bike, falls and knocked out: found easily.
There’s a ton of rare, negative scenarios where risk reduction is so cheap and easy that you’re silly not to do it. Car accident deaths are about 1 in 100 million miles driven, you certainly can’t control other drivers, but not putting on a seatbelt is stupid.