[zdragnar]

> and will allow you to make a call from their phone.

People can be wildly reluctant to just hand over a thousand or two dollars worth of equipment to a teenager in a busy street and hope they don't run off with it. Smartphone theft is still a thing.

[mothballed]

When I was homeless I would just ask people to call on my behalf. If it was an innocuous message about 10-50% of people would be willing to do it. I've even gotten people (complete strangers) to make phone calls for me while I was in handcuffs and everyone thought I was the bad guy but even then they were willing to make a call. You don't ask for the phone, you ask for someone to relay the message.

[delusional]

What hellscape are you living in? I have never had anyone try to trick me like that. I'm not saying theft doesn't exist in Denmark, but it is not something I have ever considered when helping a person out.

[zdragnar]

Any tourist area with a lot of people is going to be an area with potential for pick pockets and other theft of opportunity types. Even Vatican City has a crime rate often upwards or in excess of 1.5 per resident, and that's only what is officially recorded. Most people don't bother reporting a loss when there's no chance the police can do anything about it anyway.

[delusional]

The vatican city, having essentially no residents, would obviously be an outlier in any statistic measured against residents.

I take your point though, but I have to wonder who in their right mind would go to times square to ask to borrow a phone. Surely you'd go somewhere less busy.

[ctoth]

> People can be wildly reluctant to just hand over a thousand or two dollars worth of equipment

Who owns a $2,000 phone which isn't insured and should they really be leaving their house?

[pixl97]

I own a $60,000 dollar car that's insured, still doesn't mean I'm going to just let anyone use it when I depend on it.

[ctoth]

I would assume that you cannot merely walk in to the nearest Apple car store and get a new car the same day if something bad happened to your car, so I don't really understand your statement as there is no equivalency here to exploit in your analogy.

[pixl97]

I mean, you can go get a new car the same day, hence rental places while insurance figures everything out.

How about this, I'll pick a random day in your future while you're out doing stuff to show up and break your phone in half. How much is that going to ruin your day?