July 4th traffic deaths, drownings show liberty needs responsibility
July 4th weekend is a time to celebrate America’s liberty. Yet our liberties don’t include driving while impaired, a misjudgment which claims almost one third of all traffic deaths yearly, and an even higher 40 per cent of all traffic deaths on the mid-summer holiday.
Alcohol abuse by drivers crosses all geographic and socioeconomic lines. But motorcyclists have the highest proportion of alcohol abuse of any drivers on the road, and thus more motorcyclists die in traffic accidents on Independence Day than on any other day of the year.
Indeed, July 4 is America’s worst day of the year for all traffic fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. And the second-worst day? July 3. Some people can’t wait to start partying and driving.
Making matters worse this weekend is the fact that July 4 falls on a Saturday, and Saturday — in any month– is the worst day of the week for traffic fatalities.
In all, more than 300 people are expected to die on America’s roads Friday and Saturday. That’s 300 people who are alive today, but won’t be alive when many of us return to work on Monday. Instead, their families will be grieving.
The outlook for this weekend isn’t any better when it comes to one of the most popular activities on a hot summer day: frolicking in pools or natural waterways. Among those who do, many are children, and kids are less likely to have self-protective swimming skills.
Partly as a result, Texas has had 60 child drownings already this year, and exactly half of them occurred in June alone. The state is on pace to have 120 child drownings for the year, far more than the alarming new high of 82 last year.
Here’s a simple rule that’s easy enough to grasp, remember and take to heart: All children everywhere should be watched at all times while swimming. All children are not watched, and thus, tragedy ensues.
As July 4th looms, keep these things in mind and do what you can to protect yourself, your family and those around you.
By all means, enjoy the July 4th weekend and its more positive traditions: hot dogs, family gatherings, barbecues, fireworks (that are safely controlled) and recognition of America’s great history of liberty. Just remember that with liberty comes responsibility — on the roads, in the water and, in fact, everywhere.
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Jim S. Adler & Associates supports Safe Kids, and law firm founder Jim Adler is a member of the Joint City/County Commission on Children for Houston and Harris County, TX.
Rash of Texas child drownings begs for greater pool safety
In June, Texas lost an average of one child a day to drowning. That’s 30 of the state’s 60 child drownings for the entire first half of the year, and all in one month — a month when pool activity escalates, and so do kids’ chances of losing their young lives.
The Houston Chronicle reports that this June, in fact, was the state’s deadliest month for child drownings since such tallies were taken starting in 2005. A majority of child drowning victims were toddlers 1 to 4 years old who succumbed in private home swimming pools.
Harris County, the state’s largest, has had 13 of Texas’ 60 child drownings so far this year, or almost one in four.
All sources of water must be considered potentially hazardous for infants and small children — from buckets, bathtubs and toilets to lakes, rivers and seashores. But clearly, given the statistics, homes with private pools need stricter safety measures to protect little ones from wandering into water.
One of the best pool safety features is a completely enclosed fence with a self-shutting and child-proof gate. Pools also should be fully illuminated at night and have ample ladders and other means for emerging from the water.
Most adults can’t watch children every minute of every day, and it only takes a few brief minutes for a curious child to roam away, drop into a pool — and die. That option must be taken from them via proper precautions.
Another thing parents can do is to teach children how to swim at as young of an age as possible. Even adults often drown because they don’t know how to swim. If a child learns the ropes, he or she possibly could handle themselves in water even if improperly unsupervised.
Yet all children, including those with swimming ability, must be watched in or around water at all times. Let’s repeat that: All children, at all times.
How vital is this? Recently a girl on a trip in Winston-Salem, NC drowned in a pool surrounded by eight lifeguards and two chaperones. Clearly, she wasn’t being watched continuously. And if a child isn’t watched, the child may not be saved in time if he or she sinks to a pool’s bottom.
With summer not even halfway over, Texas is on course this year to top its worst child drowning totals on record. The state had 66 child drownings in 2005, 70 in 2006, 63 in 2007 and 82 in 2008. At the current rate, there will be 120 in 2009.
Houston personal injury lawyer Jim Adler, founder of Jim S. Adler & Associates, believes that protecting kids deserves the highest of priorities.
As a child safety advocate, Adler has become a member of the Joint City/County Commission on Children for Houston and Harris County, as appointed by Houston Mayor Bill White. Adler also is a strong supporter of the Safe Kids organization.
Keeping kids safe is a cherished value and goal of Jim S. Adler & Associates. Feel free to explore links on this blog for more tips on safeguarding children, and let’s dedicate ourselves to a far safer summer than Texas has had so far.
Non-crash car accident child deaths must end
Enough is enough. Too many children have died when parents or guardians left them unattended in cars. As summer’s heat rises, such neglect, in effect, is a death sentence. Wake up, America, and don’t ever leave small children behind in a hot vehicle, which one emergency physician says is like “leaving your child in a lit oven.”
Besides protecting the child’s life, you may be helping your own. Increasingly, parents are being arrested and charged with such offenses as child abuse, child neglect or child endangerment. The last can be a felony leading to a jail sentence. Was it worth it to leave the child alone while you went inside a store for some cigarettes?
New Texas law helps war on drunk driving accidents
America is at war — not with another country, but with its own drunk drivers. You may not sense that your country is at war with them, but drunk drivers — by default if not design — are definitely at war with America, inflicting far more deaths, injuries and damages that many military conflicts.
Each year, the car carnage caused by drunk driving totals around 16,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of injuries and many billions of dollars in damages.
For far too long, enough has been enough. Yet the plague continues. Each day, law-abiding people die in horrific accidents, and all because drunks were loose on our roads and highways. Despite decades of effort and outstanding crusaders such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the terrible toll persists.
Heparin overdose of Quaid twins spurs $500,000 hospital settlement
A year and a half ago, the heparin overdose of actor Dennis Quaid’s twins was big news. The legal settlement just announced in the case isn’t as big of a news story to most media, but it’s also very significant.
The Associated Press reports that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has offered a $500,000 settlement in the case, which the Quaids have accepted. Half of that money will go to each of the twins: Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone. Also, Cedars-Sinai will pay for any additional medical care the Quaid twins ever need related to their injury, though they seem to have recovered.
Child deaths in non-crash car accidents prompt NHTSA report
In ancient times before cell phones, texting and other multi-tasks put safe driving in the back seat for too many people, we were often warned about leaving pets in a locked car on a hot day. But these days, even small children who are already in the back seat can be subjected to such dangerous indifference by distracted drivers who leave them in a car.
Across America, children are dying because parents or guardians who are in too big of a hurry or too much of a multi-tasking fog forget and leave them locked in a car as temperatures climb toward 100 degrees. Such a sad child death happened again Sunday in St. Augustine, Fla. Don’t let it happen on any day to the child for whom you are utterly responsible.
MADD on the right track in fighting drunk driving accidents
Beyond groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving — and individual victims of drunk drivers — America goes about its business each day with precious little regard for the national nightmare of drunk driving and the horrific toll it relentlessly carves from our society.
Every day new tragedies erupt and new statistics add up. Yet not enough is being done about it, which is one reason why MADD just severed its ties with the “Century Council,” an activist group — funded by the liquor industry itself — with which MADD had collaborated.
Sleep apnea makes 18 wheeler drivers even more dangerous
It’s bad enough that 18 wheelers, semi trucks, big rigs and tractor trailers are slaughtering thousands of innocents on America’s roads and highways. Now we learn that our beef with the trucking business may include beefy drivers.
Sleep scientists at Harvard University have discovered a strong link between overweight drivers and apnea sleep, a sleep disorder which puts drivers at high risk of driving while asleep at the wheel. As MSNBC reports, at Harvard they’re calling for mandatory testing of obese drivers, which they believe will help reduce the 5,200 deaths and 100,000 injuries yearly in this country’s large truck accidents.
Tyson daughter’s death begs for child safety resolve
Again, tragedy has struck down an innocent child — and again, the tragedy was avoidable. Former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson’s 4-year-old daughter has died, a day after strangling on a cord left dangling from a treadmill at her Phoenix, AZ home.
The treadmill wasn’t turned on, but clearly the cord was still dangerous. Normally such cords are clipped at one end to a treadmill user, so if the person falls, the cord will pull out of the machine at the other end and turn it off. In this case, little Exodus Tyson’s weight apparently wasn’t enough to pull out the cord, which instead became a noose.
‘Wonderful’ pit bull attacks Pittsburgh Steelers star’s son
Often the key to fixing a problem is to overcome denial. That’s why AA members confront their demons and proclaim themselves alcoholics, rather than pretending they’re just social drinkers. But many pit bull owners are different. While the canine carnage continues, they’re in denial, ceaselessly ranting that pit bulls are wonderful dogs and why don’t other people quit casting them in a bad light?
We don’t because we, at least, are not in denial. We are well aware that virtually any pit bull can be a dangerous dogs, and we wonder why people buy such potential killers dogs when they could have, instead, a sweet little mutt.
