ryde and die. having a swimming pool in your backyard is one hundred times more likely to kill your child than having a gun around, as stated in freakonomics. even taking into account some mitigating factors, a child probably still has a twenty five times greater chance of drowning than getting shot. so what do you do? not install a pool in your new house? buy a retractable cover for your pool (which actually makes it more dangerous)? use the community pool policed by bored and distracted high school lifeguards? buy a really big tub? dig up the slip'n slide?

how do we take these kinds of statistics into our lives, ones that clearly show us that one thing is more dangerous than the other. for the longest time, i had this quote up in my bathroom: "more people are killed annually by donkeys than die in commercial airline crashes." that statistic turns out to be highly suspect, but it was amusing anyway. donkeys killing more people than airplanes? now i have nothing to fear but donkey rides.

while it's easy to avoid donkeys, there is a certain amount of risk we have to live with. cars for example. cars may cause a high number of deaths and injuries, but most of us need vehicular transportation. we take the risk of driving because the accompanying reward of travel freedom is worth it. now, for something like drinking and driving, the reward to risk ratio probably makes less sense. but maybe some statistician could prove that drinking and driving isn't as dangerous as eating candy bars, i don't know.

how about getting on a motorcycle? nobody needs a motorcycle, but lots of people covet or own one. bikes are fun. bikes are fast. bikes are dangerous. there's a reason why mothers cry when their sons get on motorcycles. bikes, and a generic biker's mentality, are designed for achievement of a rush. nobody gets a rush at 50mph, that rush only comes at high speeds, risky speeds.

most anecdotal evidence i've heard about bikers involve the time "i almost died" or "crashed but only broke my collarbone, femur and half my right pinky." it's almost a badge of honor, a rite of passage, to crash and live to laugh about it.

but what happens when you don't get to live and laugh? every time you get on a motorcycle, your survival rate drops dramatically. or so i've heard. just this morning, a programmer here at work lost his life riding his special edition harley to work. he died maybe a mile from here, t-boned at an intersection through no fault of his own. that silver metallic beauty we all admired in the parking lot led directly to the loss of his life.

james also got into a similar type of accident less than two weeks ago. same type of intersection, same work day traffic rush, same reckless driver running a red. but the difference was that james was in a car, so he was left with nary a scratch on his body. two accidents, same circumstances, nearly the same locations, two entirely different outcomes.

is the moral of the story here that bikes are dangerous and shouldn't be purchased and enjoyed? hard to say. you have to risk a little to live a little. and hey, who am i to opine about endangering one's health? i still smoke. and that makes less sense than riding a motorcycle if you think about it. at least with a motorcycle, you could probably qualify your joy. i can't qualify the joys of smoking -- there's nothing particularly joyful about it.

so when you hear that someone dies from a motorcycle accident, or dies from lung cancer, what do you think? i think "he knew the risks, he paid the price, too bad." so when i see my friends mount up, or i myself light up, a similar statement goes through my head. i don't want them (or me) to die, but hey, do what you gotta do right? heed the warnings, minimize the risks, and make sure you enjoy the rewards enough to make it all worth it.

but when something bad happens, well......you had it coming?