I have seen some horrific accidents in my time. They have claimed life’s of people and their loved ones. I have been in a couple but have been lucky enough to escape without any serious injury. The CDC has the following on mortality rates:

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

• Heart disease: 633,842
• Cancer: 595,930
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 155,041
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 146,571
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 140,323
• Alzheimer’s disease: 110,561
• Diabetes: 79,535
• Influenza and Pneumonia: 57,062
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 49,959
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 44,193

As you can see, accidents is number 4 in a list that is filled with natural causes and the last one is for people that have bad dreams or whom I refer to as the murder god. I ask myself if there was anything that could have been done to prevent these deaths. They’re unintentional, seemingly. These stats are yearly, making the total deaths from the above incidents at, where’s my calculator, 2,013,017 deaths per year. Of those roughly 190,700 were preventable or 9% of the deaths yearly. What can we do to prevent some of these deaths, well, for the natural causes, eat right, exercise routinely, at least 20 to 30 minutes 3 or 4 times weekly. That means you have to actually sweat, not pour water over your head or walk in the rain, even though I used to love jogging in the rain on a nice summer day. Stop smoking and using illicit drugs, fall and stay in love, actually proven to help your heart, laugh a lot, even (especially) at yourself, don’t take life too seriously, especially politics, don’t fret over money or things you don’t have control over and watch a comedy.

As for the accidents, check to make sure you tires are safe. That has been my biggest problem over the last couple of years. For some reason my tires have come off while I was driving (almost, one lug nut was left and on it’s last thread) and I had a blowout while driving, luckily my family wasn’t in the car. I have been in a couple of accidents but I have been lucky enough to walk away even though my air bag seems to have failed to go off in 3 of them. I had a close head to head call around a bend with a dump truck, I’m going to thank my boxing training and quick reflexes. Don’t drink while driving you may spill your drink and don’t drive tired, particularly on shitty tires. Drive slow on snowy roads, or you’ll miss everyone spinning out when they think that their car is the car that can drive on snow like on a regular day and be a considerate and attentive driver meaning, don’t be that guy, you know, the guy that sees a person that wants to come into your lane before they get stuck on the exit lane and you purposely stay right next to him so you can frustrate the person and then watch him give you the finger. Don’t tailgate because road rage is real and some people are nuts. If you are late to your appointment, don’t try to make up time by playing frogger or pole position with your car, you don’t have three lives. Don’t take a zero tolerance on us idiots that drive badly, show some charity and let us go ahead of you because you will almost be sure to pass us up a mile down the road arguing with a cop about everyone else speeding and why are you giving me a ticket. And most of all, be happy, because you don’t make any money not being happy and it feels so much better to be happy.

Some other good hints are yellow means proceed with caution, not free hamburgers if you make it across and Stop, while self explanatory, people tend to see it only as a recommendation. Here’s a story I like to share, I was driving with my girlfriend and I ran a red light, she said you just ran a red light, I said don’t worry, my brother does it all the time, I ran another red light and she said you just ran another red light, I said again, don’t worry my brother does it all the time, I stopped at a green light and she said, what are you doing, it’s green, I said, I’m just making sure my brother isn’t coming the other way. Hopefully I made you laugh and added an hour to your life.