This article is not a 20 second read and that is the point.  You can’t explain something complex without spending some time on it.  A couple of weeks ago I was moving around in the house in the morning with the TV tuned to the Today show.  I heard them introduce a story with something along the lines of “We are used to seeing the stories of elderly drivers putting the car in drive instead of reverse or stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake and driving through a store front.  But are elderly drivers really unsafe drivers?”.  I probably have that wrong, but that captures the gist of it.  Basically the story went on to promote how safe elderly drivers are  by quoting some statistics saying drivers over 65 cause fewer crashes than other age groups.  The shocker was that they brought in a 97 year-old man as the poster boy for safe elderly drivers!

I’m positive that 97 year-old drivers are not safe drivers as a group.  It’s simply a matter of physiology  Brain processing speed, ability to deal with complex situations, flexibility, vision, quickness in movement, and many other things that significantly degrade in old age make dealing with rapidly changing traffic situations much more difficult.

The report had someone on who quoted some stats like that mentioned above and then claimed that since older drivers drive slower and are more careful they are actually safer drivers.  It ended with some feel good impressions that the elderly drivers are not unsafe after all.

Part of the problem is the way terms like “elderly” were used.  When most people think about old or elderly drivers they are not thinking about the 65 year-old who just retired.  Instead when people imagine elderly drivers they probably have in mind 80 or 90 year-olds.

A big problem with this story is the misleading way “driver” was used.  An unsafe driver implies the act of driving.  I really don’t care about how safe a driver is when he isn’t driving.  What I do care about is their actions when they are behind a wheel.  So if you claim that older drivers cause fewer accidents that other age groups you would be claiming something that is technically true  but highly misleading. This is due simply to the fact that they driver far few miles.  You can’t cause an accident sitting on your sofa. However, per mile driven the story is something else entirely.

If you look at the actual detailed numbers collected by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration you can come to some of the following conclusions.

Per person the number of accidents decreases as age increases.  This is simply due to less miles driven.  It says absolutely nothing about how safe someone is when they are when actually behind the wheel.

Looking at crashes per mile we see the following.  Drivers between 35 and 65 are the safest and the rate is pretty flat between them.  Between 25 and 35 and  between 65 and 80 the rates are noticeably worse but nothing to get too worried about.  Between 20 and 25 and between 80 and 85 the rates are significantly worse than the safest ages.  Drivers under 20 and 85 or older are magnitudes worse in the number of crashes.  The elderly are 3 times more likely to be involved in a crash and the teenagers are 5 times more likely.  There isn’t a 90+ or a 95+ category but looking at the numbers that are available you can imagine the accident waiting to happen that exists in those age categories.

The other thing that is significant is fatality rate for drivers by age.  Young drivers are much much more likely to survive a crash simply because of their more resilient physiology.  An 85 year-old who is involved in a wreck is more like to be killed than a 25 year-old.  The numbers here show a dramatic effect with older drivers killed at many times the rate of younger drivers.  Apparently they are killing themselves.  So aside from the fact they are likely to harm others, perhaps the elderly drivers need to get off the road for their own sake.

The conclusions here are all about AVERAGES.  I’m certain despite the group averages that there are some incredibly safe teenage drivers.  The same thing may be true about some elderly drivers, but a careful teenager is simply a safer driver than a careful 80 year-old for the physiological reasons mentioned above.  People my age are supposed to be safe drivers but my wife probably has a different opinion.

I’m not all that worried about drivers of any age (except people like the 97 year-old dare devil).  I am pretty worried about the misleading stories that are foisted upon us by daily by media organizations that have seemingly have lost all ability to explain anything even slightly nuanced.

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A couple of weeks ago a NYC policeman saw a homeless man sitting on a sidewalk in Time’s Square in freezing weather without socks and shoes.  He went into a shoe store nearby and bought the man a pair of fairly expensive boots with his own money.  Some tourist recorded it and the video went viral and made the national news. The woman who recorded the whole thing teared up as she described it to the national media.  The whole nation seemed to be touched by this act of kindness.

At the time I thought to myself I would have never done that.  Yes, I’m very cynical and I admit it.  While I love the idea of random acts of kindness, I believe they should not be mindless.  There has to be some criteria and that criteria needs to be more than if something is lacking it should be provided.  That’s what the government does and it creates all kinds of unintended consequences.  Some things may be a no brainer – an elderly woman struggling with a heavy package of some kind is a stereotypical example that comes to mind.  But when it comes to a man sitting on the street without shoes, the situation is a little more complicated.

I think the intent of the policeman was nothing but pure and that seems to be what touched everyone, however that does not mean it was the right thing to do.  I would argue that the failure to think about who you are helping and why is self-defeating.  That is unless you just want to feel good about yourself regardless of the consequences.  When I first saw the story I thought to myself that there has to be a reason he doesn’t have shoes in the first place and I would argue virtually anyone in the U.S. could have a pair of shoes and socks.  Therefore I’m not sure it is a good idea to give them to someone sitting on a sidewalk.  If you give them some cheap old used pair that might be a different story, but to go into a store and buy a new pair seems to be going across the line.  A cynic like me would think they will probably just sell them and buy wine.  Would you have bought him a bottle of wine?  If not and that’s what he does with the shoes you have effectively done the same thing.  On what basis do you have the information to make that judgment?  I don’t know what would happen one way or the other, but don’t kid yourself about what people laying on sidewalks are likely to do with any money you give them.  I’m not trying to be a scrooge at Christmas so bear with me a little.

I heard this morning the same man was found out on the cold streets again without his precious shoes.  Reportedly he said “those boots are worth a lot of money.”  Supposedly he is afraid someone is going to harm him in order to steal them.  Right.  I suspect he intends to profit from them, but even if you take him at his word the point is that despite the policeman’s personal gift and sacrifice, the shoes aren’t warming his feet.  The resources spent on providing them to him could have been put to better use.  If you believe the homeless man, they are stashed away and thus totally useless.  I’m extremely disturbed by something else he said.  Apparently he’s upset that the video went around the world and he is not getting “a piece of the pie.”  Regardless, the act of kindness did NOT accomplish its intended purpose, unless the purpose was for us all to feel good about a lovely story.  Give the money to a soup kitchen and let them feed a bunch of people for the same cost as the now useless boots.  You might give all your old shoes to the Salvation Army and buy yourself some new ones.

Everybody was able to get off on the beautiful story but for all we know it just fed a sickness like alcoholism.  A friend of mine time told me one time he had just left the dentist’s office with a bag containing the usual floss, toothbrush, etc.  He said while waiting at a corner he put a $5 bill in the bag and handed it to an apparently homeless man.  The man looked in the bag, evidently missing the $5 bill, then tossed it back at my friend with a disgusted look on his face.  I had a man tell me the same sob story about “just being released from the hospital” twice several months apart in the same B&N parking lot.  The second time, knowing for certain the story was a complete load of crap, I watched as the man hit up a couple of other guys.  As I entered the book store, one of them pulled out his wallet and handed the man some money.

People standing on corners panhandling or sitting on cold streets without shoes are probably not just people “down on their luck”.  It’s possible but not likely.  The vast majority of them have serious issues that are not going to be helped by thoughtless acts of kindness.  You can actually hurt people by trying to help them in ways that are not really helpful.  Most parents eventually learn this lesson even with their not-so-helpless children.  Bailing them out may actually hurt them in the long run.

I would rather give $5 to an organization that actually has some qualifications and experience in how to help people.  Organizations that give them something like a hot meal or a place to stay.  Your $5 bill handed to someone begging for it may not go to food, it may go to alcohol, drugs, a quickie in the alley, or something else not likely to to be recorded by a tourist’s camera and warm the hearts of the nation.  Driving by a corner or seeing someone sitting on the sidewalk, we’re in no position to make the kind of judgments necessary to do the right thing.  If you feel the need to help, think about it first.  Maybe you would be better off donating to an agency in a better position than you to decide what and for whom something needs to be done.

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Friedrich Nietzsche said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but I’m convinced what doesn’t kill you makes you afraid.  This article is about what doesn’t kill you.  I get so tired of the media inspired hysteria and hype.  We worry about these non-threats due to the availability heuristic of the human brain that comes from dramatic images and stories we see in the media.  We can easily bring to mind examples and it makes our brains think they are common occurrences.

The following numbers are approximations for deaths by various causes in the U.S. in the first decade of the 21st Century.  Don’t get caught up in exact numbers, but consider the magnitudes.  This is 10 years worth of data.

Total U.S. Deaths in First Decade of 21st Century

5 – Shark
500 – Airline Crash
500 – Lightning
500 – Children Abducted and Killed By Stranger
3,000 – Terrorism
210,000 – Homicide
250,000 – Accidental Falls
315,000 – Liver Disease
320,000 – Accidental Poisoning
350,000 – Automobile Accidents
385,000 – Blood Poisoning
480,000 – Other Accidents
525,000 – Kidney Disease
560,000 – Flu or Pneumonia
770,000 – Diabetes
800,000 – Alzheimer’s
1,400,000 – Any Kind of Accidents (included separately above)
1,430,000 – Lung Disease
1,470,000 – Stroke
6,230,000 – Cancer
6,685,000 – Heart Disease

So shark attack, airplanes, stranger danger, and terrorism are all in the same category as being struck by lightning – so remote as to be almost non-existent.  They aren’t even on the chart with everything else.

Some people will say well I’m not worried about my child dying of Alzheimer’s so comparisons to things like that don’t count.  OK, but it isn’t all about your kids, it’s about you too.  But anyway let’s look at kids only.

500 – Abducted and Killed By Stranger

30,000 – Homicide
75,000 – Automobile Accidents
350,000 – Natural Causes

Your child is 700 times more likely to die of disease than stranger abduction.  You should be a lot more worried about them being murdered by someone they know than a stranger in the park.   Every time you put them in the car you are much more likely to kill them.  I’m not saying drop your child off in a dangerous neighborhood at night and let them find their way home by themselves.  I am saying we are worrying about the wrong things.  I read a weird statistic once that probably isn’t correct, but it makes the point regardless.  It was that in order to get your child abducted and killed by a stranger you would have to leave them unsupervised in the park once a week for 750,000 years.

About the only thing on this list I worry about is cancer.  Since I’m about 2,000 times more likely to die of cancer than terrorism and 500 times more likely to die in any kind of accident, I shouldn’t spend one second thinking about terrorism.

I’m 7,000 times more likely to die of one of the top 15 causes of death than I am to die of terrorism.  Every time you shove a French fry down the throat of your kid your are more likely to contribute to their early death than by turning your back on them in the park.  Once again don’t get caught up in these estimates and whether they are exact.  They are illustrations to show relative risks.

What doesn’t kill you is making you afraid and what does kill you is probably being ignored.  If you really want you and your child to be safe, stop eating donuts or those French fries and go play in the park.   If beyond all logic you are afraid of strangers in the park, then you shouldn’t go.  But it’s not because of the stranger it’s because of the much more likely possibility that you will be killed in an accident at the park or on the way to the park than by the stranger.  And don’t stop at MacDonald’s on the way home either.

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Something around 50 people (round number) are murdered every day in the U.S.  I have a great deal of sympathy for the families involved, but this is not a national tragedy and doesn’t deserve the attention it is getting.  I do have an opinion on a certain aspect of the case that I will share at the end of this article, but before that I want to say something else about the reaction to it and the attention it is getting.

It must be stated that the people protesting in the street, the parents, the media pundits, bloggers, you, me, and everyone else do not really know what happened during the confrontation and probably never will.  Two people were there.  One is dead and the one that is alive has a huge motive to lie about it so it is likely we will never really know.

Despite the complete lack of knowledge of the facts, much of the country believes they are in a position to pontificate loudly about what should be done or not done to George Zimmerman.  I don’t know what should be done.  I don’t know if he broke any laws.  What do Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton know about this case and exactly how are they helping?

Since blacks and liberals are protesting and talking about guns and racism, the right is shouting back and now they are both yelling at each other and calling each other names.  It’s no longer about Trayvon despite what all these people pretend.  It’s an opportunity to claim to be right about the larger issues which they each hold near and dear.  The dead boy and the shooter are now just vehicles to further their respective causes.  The people who are shouting are far more concerned about winning debating and political points than winning justice in this case.

No matter what the issue is anymore, as soon as somebody lines up on one side somebody else lines up on the other side and it turns into an absurd shouting match with nobody really knowing what they are talking about and with no solution in sight.  Ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity, or grayness are no longer allowed in public debate.  Everything has to be a binary choice between right and wrong or good and evil.  I’m right, you’re wrong.  I’m good, you’re evil.

Please name one important issue anywhere were calm rational discourse occurs in a way that really matters.  We are either shouting at each other or shooting at each other.  (Obama is flying little remote control toy planes all over the world shooting missiles at people he doesn’t like.)  The people who aren’t shooting or shouting have mainly withdrawn from public and just go on about their private lives.  This is the approach I take most of the time.

I don’t expect people to agree, but I do expect them to be reasonable. This case has reminded me that I’ve pretty much concluded that reasonable people are forever more going to be hopelessly drowned in a sea of shouting, name calling, and fear mongering.

I do have an opinion to share on this case and I’ll try not to shout or call people who disagree with me any names.  I don’t know what happened in the confrontation between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin and I don’t think anyone else does either.  However I think we do know what happened earlier, before that confrontation.  We all have choices to make and by his own voice on his call to 911, George Zimmerman showed he had a fundamental choice to either mind his own business or to poke his nose into someone else’s.  Like many people these days he chose the latter.  That is the real problem here.  People think they have the right to tell other people what to do.

It is not against the law to walk down the street wearing a hoodie.  That’s what ticks me off about the whole thing and is getting lost in the debate about “Standing Your Ground”.  Conservatives and Libertarians should not make George Zimmerman their poster boy for the right to defend yourself with guns.  (btw I believe people have the right to carry a gun and defend their person or property).  George Zimmerman made the choice to confront Trayvon likely knowing full well it could turn into something ugly.  I don’t know what happened when he decided to pull the trigger (and nobody else does either), but George Zimmerman’s choice to confront Trayvon instead of staying safely inside his car was the ultimate cause of all of this.  For that reason I blame him for what happened whether he committed any crime or not by Florida law.

All the talk of cries for help, cuts on the head or broken noses is after the fact rationalization that are not part of that first decision he made.  He may not have committed a crime and he may have, but I believe from his own words that he made made a wrong decision.  That is a tragedy.  George Zimmerman was not protecting his person or property from a threat when he made the decision to engage Trayvon Martin.  So his self-defense claim later rings pretty hollow to me.  Maybe Trayvon felt threatened and was defending himself.  I don’t know.

I have to let the police handle this.  We may not like it, but it’s the only choice we have.  That’s called the rule of law and something we should hold dear.  They may be biased and have an agenda but so does everyone else. What are we supposed to do, let the mobs in the streets make the decision? Do the people protesting in the street really want to go back to that?  I don’t like street justice of either George Zimmerman’s kind or the kind that some people are now calling for.  Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson need to go home.  I don’t want street protests to decide this case.  Everyone else needs to stop shouting and calling each other nasty names because they happen to be on the other side of some political or cultural divide.  That not only gets us nowhere, it makes the problems worse.

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This article is just a random rant.

It’s like a train wreck that you can’t look away from.  Usually I go to Google news to scan the science section for interesting tidbits.  I don’t read the other trash.  However, today as I was scrolling down I saw a headline that I just had to read, something about Kelly Clarkson loosing fans over support of Ron Paul.  Why would anyone stop listening to songs because the artist supported a politician you didn’t like?

I found this:

“I used to like Kelly Clarkson. But I can’t like anyone who is either ignorant enough or arrogant enough to endorse a candidate like Ron Paul,” Spafford Freeman told Fox411 on Thursday from her home in Minnesota. “I have listened to ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ for the last time.”

Singers are often a wacky bunch and often do a lot of things I wouldn’t do.  But I don’t listen to them because of their politics or other antics.  What is she a hero you worship who has now fallen?  If you like “Since You’ve Been Gone” why the hell do you care anything about the what the person who sings it thinks about a politician who doesn’t have a chance in hell to win?

In any case did Kelly Clarkson say something wrong?  Did she express racist or homophobic views?  No she said she supported Ron Paul because of his limited government stance.

I like a lot of people who think a lot of things differently than I do and who are completely opposed to things I care about.  So what.  You are a shallow person if you can’t accept anyone who thinks differently than you do, much less someone who doesn’t know you from a clod of dirt.

Here’s a good one:

“Ew just found out Kelly Clarkson luvs Ron Paul lyk, 4eva and stuff. Soz Kelly, not your fan anymore.”

What the hell does that even say?  My response is you’re a freaking idiot – 4eva.

Evidently Clarkson apologized because she didn’t mean to offend anyone.  Now that is what I don’t like.  We want people to be authentic but nobody of influence can say anything anymore without offending someone and being ripped to shreds over it.  I wish she would have said F**K YOU, I don’t want any fans who would stop listening to my music over this.   Now that is probably what she thinks but she can’t be authentic so her publicist likely helped her craft a politically acceptable apology.

I guess I’m just getting to be an old crank.  Happy New Year anyway!

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This will probably make some people mad, but I think this “world crisis” mania is getting out of control.  First of all I am not a callous person and it pains me to see anyone suffering for any reason.  Secondly, what happened in Japan with the tsunami and its aftermath is undoubtedly a tragedy for the Japanese people as a whole and in particular for the victims and their families.  But let’s examine some salient facts.

Approximately 7,000 people die every day in the U.S..  Heart disease alone killed more people in the U.S. in the week after the tsunami than died as a result of the tsunami.  About 15,000 people starve to death every single day and many of those are children.  Where is all the sympathy for them?

The local media recently were promoting a telethon sponsored by the Red Cross to raise money for Japan.  I’m sorry but Japan is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and I think they are fine without our help.  I wouldn’t expect them to donate money for relief in the U.S.  The Japanese people don’t need the rest of the world’s money for this disaster.  By all means give them all the technical or logistical support we can for the nuclear power plants, but stop the rest of the madness.

This is not the Asian tsunami or the Haitian earthquakes which killed hundreds of thousands of people in very poor countries.  This is news media hysteria and quite frankly shocking entertainment programming.  I was interested in the news of the tsunami and I’m glad I was informed, but the truth is even with the radiation issue it is extremely unlikely to impact me or my community.  I don’t need pictures of debri strewn coastlines or smoldering reactors beamed at me 24 hours day after day. We can’t solve mother nature’s problems or the rest of the world’s issues, so it’s time we started worrying about more local things we can control.  I think we should give the Japanese people our sympathy and respect and move on.

While this was going on we decided to get militarily involved in a civil war in another country.  Oh yeah and this is the Obama administration not the Bush administration for those of you who think it really matters.  This is the only thing that was able to divert the media’s attention from Japan.

People are dying like flies all over the world for various reasons.  Human created wars and other human created problems dwarf what is  happening in Japan.  Governments and individuals the world over are hemorraging debt.    The Japanese people are well equipped to take care of themselves without our obsessive interest and meddling.

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I know this is pretty much irrelevant to the topic of this blog, but I thought many of you would be interested anyway.  I find this information is little known and that is probably because it doesn’t fit the political objectives of many people and it isn’t splashy news material.  This is the latest best guess of the U.N.  Please note that many population experts are actually worried about a population implosion that will create an aging population with insufficient young productive people to support it. 

The current population of the earth is around 6.8 billion.  A few years ago when I suggested to some people that the population would peak at 10 – 12 billion I was laughed out of the room.  Here is what the United Nation’s experts believe at the current time.  Basically in 40 years the population is going to peak at about 9 billion and then remain there for at least the next 150 years.  Nobody really knows but the evidence against a population explosion is quite strong.

In these projections, world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075. Population therefore grows slightly beyond the level of 8.92 billion projected for 2050 in the 2002 Revision, on which these projections are based. However, after reaching its maximum, world population declines slightly and then resumes increasing, slowly, to reach a level of 8.97 billion by 2300, not much different from the projected 2050 figure.

– United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
– Population Division

I consider this extremely positive news in a sea of doom and gloom.

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