Parking garage stairwells are unmonitored assault hotspots — 10% of garage crimes happen there

Parking garage stairwells are isolated, poorly lit, echo-dampened concrete corridors with no security cameras, no cell signal, and no foot traffic outside of the 5pm rush — making them the most dangerous part of any urban parking structure. Roughly 10% of all crimes in parking facilities (assaults, robberies, carjackings) occur in stairwells, and women report feeling so unsafe that they pay $5-10 extra for valet or ground-level lots specifically to avoid walking through them. Emergency call boxes, when they exist, are mounted at stairwell entrances rather than on each landing, meaning a victim on the 4th floor landing has no way to summon help. Garage operators resist installing cameras in stairwells because footage creates liability exposure — if they have video of an incident, plaintiffs argue the operator 'knew' the area was dangerous and failed to act, so operators prefer willful ignorance to documented risk.