2019.02.19 : Safety Briefing
Humans take 3.1 billion flights per year, each watching an aircraft safety briefing, for 17,682 years of aircraft safety briefings per year. But no one dies in aircraft accidents. Not relatively few, or virtually none. Literally none. However - 1.25 million people are killed in motor vehicle crashes every year – with another 20-50 million injured or disabled. Almost anything you do wrong behind the wheel, even for a second, can get you and everyone around you killed. Not one of those drivers gets a safety briefing. Ever.... (read more)
2012.12.10 : Holiday Safe Driving Spiel 2012
This holiday season, in the U.S. alone, 1,161 people will die in motor vehicle crashes, and 124,100 will be injured, many cripplingly and permanently. Please don't be amongst them. Please drive very carefully. For this years's harangue, I'm publishing excerpts from a totally fascinating book I read last year, called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).... (read more)
2011.12.20 : How To Not Die In A Car Crash
(Previously "Safe Holiday Driving Harangue")
Motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of death for Americans age 1-44. In 2009, 33,963 Americans died in road crashes and 2.3 million were treated in emergency rooms for injuries, many of them disfiguring or disabling. Here's how to survive your drive.... (read more)
2008.11.29 : Driving While Intalkicated
More Compelling Multimedia Remix Edition
Statistics often fail to impact. So here's some multimedia - video, audio, and a few images (even a PDF) - which underscore the risks you impose on yourself, other drivers, and loved ones, by talking on the phone while driving.... (read more)
2008.11.01 : "The Mind-BlackBerry Problem"
At some point last year, I was struck - like, nearly literally, knocked back a couple of steps - by an article in the Telegraph reporting that talking on the phone while driving has been shown to be more dangerous than drunk driving.... (read more)
2006.12.25 : Harangue Hits Home
Way, Way Too Close To Home
Last Wednesday (Dec 13), I was involved in a very serious car accident. Exactly what you said was most common happened:... (read more)
2006.12.21 : Holiday Safe Driving Harangue
Yes, it's that time of year again. I'll make it brief: please exercise great care when driving.... (read more)
2004.12.21 : No Sex, Please, We're British
According to the UK charity RoadPeace, ten people die on the roads in Britain every day. (I was glad to find these guys because it makes me feel less alone and insane for worrying about this stuff.)... (read more)
2003.12.23 : Annual Safe Driving Harangue
I've given offense in the past by seeming to suggest that the people in my life don't know how to drive, or need my driving advice. I'm so sorry for that, which isn't what I mean at all.... (read more)
2002.12.18 : Snows on Kilimanjaro
So I actually spent a lot of time worrying about, and trying to figure out how to avoid, dying in that Land Cruiser we took to Serengeti.... (read more)
ARISEN, Book Thirteen Launch Date
The Secret History of the Military Adventure Novelist