In America, the number of workplace deaths has declined — but not for Hispanics.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says worker deaths overall dropped from 6,217 in 1992 to 5,657 in 2007, a reduction of about 8 per cent. Yet Hispanic worker deaths in the same period increased from 533 in 1992 to 937 in 2007, the latest year with set statistics. That’s a rise of  almost 80 per cent in Hispanic workplace deaths.

Larger numbers of Hispanics in the USA’s workforce account for some of the increase, but only a small amount. Since 1998, Hispanics in America’s workforce went from 10.4 per cent to 14 per cent in 2007.

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You see it each day: You’re driving in a parking lot, in the same direction as other cars are parked and pointed, given the lanes and lines, and another driver enters from the other end going the wrong way.

Unless they’re piloting a unicycle, they can’t pull into a parking space, because they’re pointed in entirely the wrong direction. But they can keep everyone else from proceeding, at least until they back up and get out of the way.

Now really, how hard is it to travel in the right direction? Down is down, and up is up, right? And similarly, the wrong way is the wrong way. Yet people do it so often that you wonder how they avoid traffic fatalities.

Actually, they don’t. Just over the holiday weekend, a wrong way driver who was also speeding slammed into an oncoming Jeep in West Harris County. The wrong-way driver died at the scene. The man who was driving in the right direction suffered serious injuries.

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