Our roads should be the most dangerous environment most people ever encounter, filled as they are with speedophiles racing their lethal weapons.

And most people are exposed to the roads every day, often for large parts of the day.

Our hospitals should be amongst the safest environments most people are ever subjected to, and most people do not enter a hospital from one year to the next. If they do in any one year they are usually in and out in no time these days.

A multicultural "English"person's home is his non oppresive, non threatening castle. Another environment that should be ultra safe.

But to quote conservative figures, around 5,000 people die in domestic accidents each year. Around 5,000 die in hospital accidents each year. Around 5,000 die from hospital aquired infections each year.

Around 20,000, at a conservative estimate, die unneccesarily in the NHS each year.

Around 20,000 die from hypothermia each winter.

But figures in the headlines today put deaths from reactions to prescribed drugs at 10,000, perhaps 20,000 pa.

And many researches put far higher values on the figures above.

So how many die in the car-nage on the roads?

A million a year? Half? 100,000 a year? 50? 10,000?

5,000 even?

No:

Around 3,500!

A figure comparable to the rail-road death toll when the levels of traffic are taken into account.

And don't forget the rail-roads are fenced off!

In fact, the alleged "speedophiles racing their lethal weapons" kill comparable numbers to cyclists per passenger mile!

Even more surprisingly, cyclists kill several times more cyclists than motorists do per vehicle mile!

Isn't it about time we stopped demonising our motorists, still probably the safest in the world?

And concentrated on the real causes of death on the roads:

The 85% of pedestrians who cause the accidents they die in.

The black clad cyclists riding the wrong way down a one way street without lights against the lights.

The road "safety" features that cause different categories of road user to fight over the same bit of road.

Or the ones that force motorists to look after their wallets rather than our children.

Better still:

Why don't we look after our own children and teach them to be safe on the roads?

That way they might survive to be better drivers!

Top post! Could not agree more!

Your Life In Their Hands

From the Radio Times article 30 September - 6 October 2000

Medical errors have always made headlines but few people realise the sheer scale of the problem - accurate figures are difficult to come by but both British and American studies suggest that around 1 in 25 patients in hospital is harmed as a direct result of medical error. Most of these, thankfully, will be minor, but around a third of mishaps result in some form of long term disability or death. Translate these fractions into hard figures and the scale of the problem quickly becomes apparent. There are approximately 10 million hospital admissions in the UK every year which means, assuming a universal 4% risk of medical mishap, that as many as 400,000 people could be injured in some way by their doctors or nurses - 56,000 of whom will be killed.

A risk that compares poorly with other activities perceived as dangerous - .... Hospitals, on the other hand, don't scare most people but maybe they should! Data from the States suggest that patients admitted to a typical acute care hospital have a 1 in 200 chance of being killed as the result of a medical or nursing cock up - and there is nothing to suggest that things are any better here, indeed they may well be worse......

From:

From:

http://www.surgerydoor.co.uk/level2/Radio%20times%20archives/docmistake.shtml

 

 

Table 1 Risk of an individual's dying (D) in any one year or developing an adverse response (A)

 

Term Used             Quantitative Risk Range     Example                                                  Measured Risk

High                       Greater than 1:100                A. Transmission to susceptible         1:1-1:2

     household contacts of measles

     or chickenpox

A. Transmission of HIV from             1:6

     mother to child (Europe)

A. Gastrointestinal effects of             1:10-1:20

     Antibiotics

 

Moderate               1:100-1:1000                           D. Smoking 10 cigarettes per day      1:200

D. All natural causes, age 40 years   1:850

Low                        1:1000-1:10000                       D. All kinds of violence and               1:3300

     Poisoning

D. Influenza                                           1:5000

D. Accident on road                            1:8000 (1:15686)*

Very low                1:10000-1:100000                   D. Leukemia                                          1:12000

(D. Accident on road)                         (1:15686)

D. Playing soccer                                 1:25000

D. Accident at home                            1:26000

D. Accident at work                             1:43000

D. Homicide                                          1:100000

Minimal                  1:100000-1:1000000               D. Accident on railway                       1:500000**

A. Vaccination-associated polio       1:1000000

Negligible              Less than 1:10000000           D. Hit by lightning                               1:10000000

D. Release of radiation by nuclear    1:10000000

     power station

 

Source: On the State of the Public Health: The Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer of the

Department of Health for the Year 1995 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1996), p. 13.

 

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/risky-business.pdf

 

 

* The number is out of date. The most recent number is 1:15686, about half the number in Table 1, moving road accidents from the "low" to the "very low" category.

 

** Don't forget there is 20 or 30 times the mileage done by cars, and the railways are fenced off from the public!

 

See also:

http://www.alkalizeforhealth.net/Ldoctordeath.htm