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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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.

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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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