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.

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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.

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Studies show that persons who call and text while behind the wheel drive as poorly as if they were drunk. Now imagine a driver being drunk and using a cell phone at the same time.

That’s what Houston prosecutors are confronting as they assess the case of a man who reportedly was both drunk and receiving a cell phone call when he ran off a road and into a drainage ditch recently near Bush Intercontinental Airport, causing the unimaginable horror of drowning five young children who were occupants of the vehicle.

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With summer winding down, chances are high that most parents aren’t thinking about swimming lessons for their kids. But any time is a good time to help your child protect himself or herself in the water — especially in view of Houston’s recent rash of child drownings.

After a 15-month-old boy drowned when he climbed into a bathtub Aug. 3, already this year Houston has had more child drownings — 25 — than in all of 2007 combined — 22.

Children drown for many reasons, including improperly maintained, supervised and illuminating swimming pools. But as a reader who wrote to this blog has stressed, many such drownings could have been prevented if the child simply knew how to swim properly. (more…)

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Are swimming pools inherently dangerous places? Try asking the 24 Houston children who have drowned in pool accidents so far this year — two more than in all of 2007. Their silence speaks volumes.

Even in shallow ends, pools may be too deep for some children to stand with their head above water, and many pools also have a deep end of more than six feet. Pools also may lack sufficient means, such as ladders, for children or anyone to climb out of the water readily.

In nighttime hours, pools also may be poorly illuminated, if they’re lit at all, making it harder to spot a swimmer in distress. And most pools don’t tend to have lifeguards, but if anything just a sign alerting you to what’s already obvious: No lifeguard on duty. (more…)

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