Just how dangerous is texting while driving? It’s 23 times as dangerous as driving without doing it. Text messaging behind the wheel increases the risk of a car accident 23 times, according to a recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. By comparison, a driver blood-alcohol level (BAC) between 0.05 and 0.09 only increases the risk … Read more
What’s New Year’s Eve without a glass of bubbly? This is the season to celebrate, but the holidays mean more than an upswing in good cheer and liquor sales—they also herald an annual epidemic of drunk driving. According to a report released in 2007 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), drunk-driving related fatal crashes rise … Read more
Perched in a leather armchair on a San Francisco stage recently, Apple’s Steve Jobs declared a new age of mobile media devices, starting with the new iPad. But for the millions of pedestrians outside in the streets, those distracting gadgets—especially cell phones—are creating some shocking, but mostly unreported, safety risks. The future of computing seems … Read more
“Older driver”—the mere phrase conjures images of Mr. Magoo obliviously driving over fire hydrants and scattering terrified barnyard animals. In real life, frequent news accounts of elderly drivers plowing into pedestrians—such as an 89-year-old who killed a 4-year-old girl crossing a street in Canton, Massachusetts in June, 2009, and an 80-year-old who did not stop after critically … Read more
There are times when parents lie in bed at night and calculate the odds. Prom night is one of those times. There is that pesky worry about teenage sex—and parental concern is always heightened when high school boys who have showered, shaved, and outfitted themselves in evening attire show up to escort high school girls … Read more
On September 5, 2009, 23-year-old Shane O’Halloran and his female companion were in a romantic embrace when they tumbled overboard from Lady Brisbane, an Australian cruise ship. The woman was quickly rescued, but O’Halloran’s body was recovered four days later. O’Halloran is not the only person to die from falling off a cruise ship in … Read more
“She was the largest craft afloat, the greatest of the works of man.” A “floating city,” she carried only as many lifeboats “as would satisfy the law.” Unfortunately, she hit an iceberg, “the only thing afloat she could not conquer,” and thousands were plunged into the icy North Atlantic, “their voices raised in agonized screams.” … Read more
On the afternoon of April 20, 1912, passengers on the German ship Bremen were told they were passing by the iceberg that had sunk the Titanic five days earlier. Those who rushed to the rails were horrified to realize that the hundred or so white dots in the ocean were frozen bodies, held aloft by life vests. … Read more
On April 15th, 2012, the passengers of the Balmoral, a cruise ship on the North Atlantic, will pause shortly after midnight to commemorate the loss of a vessel that sailed the same waters exactly 100 years before. The entire cruise, which departs Southampton on the 8th of April and is scheduled to arrive in New York … Read more
The odds a person who survived the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912 would later commit suicide are 1 in 89. Eight of the approximately 705 people who survived the sinking of the Titanic committed suicide: On October 10, 1912, Mrs. Annie Robinson, a stewardess on the Titanic, became agitated when the Devonian steamship … Read more