Signing Up For Death

 Every year several tens of thousands of humans die as a direct result of vehicular incidents.  This has been happening for several decades.  It looks to me as though the numbers are slowly declining as more safety is engineered into cars and trucks but it remains the cause of death of several tens of thousands of Americans.  A larger but equally disturbing number of folks are injured in those incidents.

This is not information that is kept secret.  It is promulgated in driver's ed classes.  Insurance companies use the numbers in calculating your rates.  They know what effect details like the gender, age, time as a licensed driver, miles driven, vehicle age, time of day and Gawd-only-knows what else have on the likelihood of an incident and the probable severity.

It has not been my experience that anyone seriously attempts to keep this information from the public. Yet, even with all of those horrible numbers freely available, a crazy percentage of Americans between the ages of 16-80 operate motor vehicles and an even larger percentage of the whole population rides in or on a motor vehicle sporadically or frequently.

I have held a driver's license for about 55 years.  I have driven in several different countries, states, cities and neighborhoods.  I have been involved in vehicular incidents as a driver, a passenger and a witness.  

At no point in my life has anyone said within range of my hearing that a victim in a vehicular incident knew the risks when they got in the car or on the motorcycle or walked alongside a street frequented by vehicles.  We acknowledge the necessity of vehicular transportation in our culture and in general, lament  it when things go horribly wrong.

I have though, heard or seen folks opine that members of the military knew what they were signing up for.  That is the circle I am unable to square.  Why should humans that sign up for the military be held to a higher standard of planning than those who frequently and routinely undertake behaviors that have not gone a whole day without killing a human in over a hundred years.

Young humans are notoriously short-sighted and young males especially so.  Signing up for the military doesn't fix that. If those in the military "know what they were signing up for", then so does every teenager and parent that ever gets in a car or sends their child off in a car.  If you aren't ready to hear that about your little Sorority Susie or Fraternity Fred, then you do not get to say it about any member of the military.