Trains. You may have grown up playing with them. You may still laughingly label them “choo-choos.” Your child may enjoy DVDs of the lovably animated Thomas the Tank Engine. And you may like to consider your spunky self “the little train that could.”

But such warm-fuzzy feelings about trains should not eclipse a basic truth: They’re dangerous. Trains weigh many tons, they move rapidly, they stop slowly and they cross busy streets regularly. You simply don’t want to mess with trains. Yet many people do, by illegally crossing railroad tracks just before trains pass, or perhaps by hitching a ride. And often these people don’t wind up chuckling over choo-choos. Instead, they wind up dead.

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Just when you thought negligence in peanut butter salmonella food poisoning couldn’t get worse, it has. The New York Times reports that Food and Drug Administration officials inspecting Peanut Corporation of America’s plant in southwest Georgia learned that plant leaders knew of salmonella contamination, failed to negate it and issued the tainted food anyway.

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When an outbreak of salmonella food poisoning struck thousands of Americans last fall, federal investigators spent months seeking the proverbial “smoking gun.” In short, they spent months trying to pinpoint the origin and responsibility of an onslaught which sickened and even killed.

First they targeted tomatoes, and eventually jalapeno peppers, then Serrano peppers. Finally the “smoking gun” turned out to be a Mexican farm from which the corrupted Serrano peppers entered the food supply.

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American food suppliers involved in the peanut butter salmonella food poisoning outbreak can count themselves lucky that they live here and not in China. In China today, a court condemned two men to execution and another person to life in prison for their roles in China’s recent tainted milk calamity.

Those folks were responsible for the deaths of at least six infants and illness that struck another 300,000 kids when they allowed raw milk to be watered down and mixed with melamine, a banned industrial chemical designed to make the milk seem protein-rich, even though it wasn’t.

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There’s ooze in the news, as the salmonella peanut butter bug spreads. It seems more products are involved than first were suspected, though no jars of grocery-store peanut butter are in the mix.

So if you buy by the jar for your PB&J (that’s peanut butter and jelly to you non-believers in the ultimate comfort food), you’re safe. But if you buy certain brands of crackers, cookies or ice cream with peanut butter, you may be in for a track meet between your bedroom and the bathroom.

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At least the tomato industry won’t take an unfair hit this time — but Americans are still at risk, due to another outbreak of salmonella food poisoning.

Unlike last fall’s outbreak which afflicted hundreds if not thousands of Americans (and finally was tracked to Mexican-grown Serrano peppers), this one has been traced quickly: to peanut butter that’s been sold in five-pound tubs to institutions such as universities, hospitals, nursing homes and restaurants.

In fact, King Nut Companies of Ohio already has issued a recall and an apology.

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Many dogs are friendly — even law-abiding. But many other dogs are aggressive –  some of them so much so that they can kill. On Sunday in Chicago, three dogs — including two Rottweiler canines — attacked and killed a 4-year-old boy. Days earlier, a Rottweiler attacked and injured two small girls in nearby Joliet, Ill.

In Chicago, Houston and many other cities, leash laws require dog owners to keep their dogs confined, either in a house, in a fenced yard or on a leash. No dog is supposed to be running loose at any time or anywhere. Yet many people routinely allow their dogs out the front door, figuring they can control them for the brief time they’re romping in the front yard.

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The economy has staggered from doldrums to near-depression. New jobs are scarce and layoffs are scary. To say money is tight is to say day follows night. And while you’re defiantly not raising a white flag, harsh realities have you surrounded.

So how can it get worse? Easy. Take a traffic accident, medical device failure or other personal injury, mix in a balky insurance company or negligent corporation, sprinkle with mounting bills for car repairs or health care, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster at just the wrong time.

If such a crisis amid crises has afflicted your life, you need help — and more than a neighbor’s comfort-food cookies or a good friend’s shoulder to cry upon. You need legal help — and not just any legal help. You need Jim S. Adler & Associates.

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