Beachcombing

Christmas will be especially great this year, knowing that our two-year-old granddaughter, Sky Violet, will be staying with us for two weeks, escorted by parents Janet and Gabe. They are in the final stages of adding a second level to their home on the east side of Oakland.

They came for a shorter visit at Thanksgiving, and it was thrilling to see how much this toddler was running around and building her vocabulary. It has been 40-plus years since our three children were transitioning into toddlerhood. Those were wonderful days.

Sky is already into “pretend” driving a car. Doubtfully I’ll be around to see that, but it did remind me of how fortunate I’ve been to experience only minor fender benders and very few traffic tickets in the past 64 years.

My brother-in-law, Marvin, took me to take the driver’s license examination in Waynesboro, Penna., since my mother did not drive, and my father passed away five years earlier. I failed at the first attempt; apparently the examiner did not appreciate my driving through the stop sign.

A recent study, conducted by personal injury lawyers John Foy & Associates, analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) over the most recent five years of data, from 2018 to the end of 2022, to determine which states have the highest percentage of driver fatalities among 15 to 25-year-olds.

Delaware ranks as the deadliest state with young drivers accounting for 22.14% of driver fatalities, followed by Rhode Island and Utah at 22%, and 21.71%, respectively.

West Virginia is the safest state for young drivers, with just over one in ten driver fatalities involving young drivers

California ranked seventh with 2,322 drivers aged 15 to 25 killed in fatal accidents out of 10,957 total deaths or 21.19%.

On average, young drivers account for almost one in five fatal accidents on the roads nationwide.

John Foy of John Foy & Associates commented on the findings, saying:

“While it is highly unlikely that driver fatalities will be eliminated completely, identifying what certain states are doing differently could be accounting for these varying rates of young driver deaths. If larger states, such as Texas, achieved similar fatality rates to West Virginia, which ranked bottom, there would have been 2,503 fewer young driver deaths in the state over the same five-year period – a staggering statistic.”

Ponder this:

• Do you ever wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and think… “That can’t be accurate!”
• If Adam and Eve were cajuns, they would have eaten the snake instead of the apple and saved us all a lot of trouble.
• We celebrated last night with a couple of adult beverages – Metamucil and Ensure.
• You know you are getting old when friends with benefits means having someone who can drive at night.
• Some of my friends exercise every day, meanwhile I am watching a show I don’t like because the remote fell on the floor.
• For those of you that don’t want Alexa listening in on your conversation they are making a male version ... it doesn’t listen to anything.
• Now that I have lived through a pandemic, I totally understand why Italian renaissance paintings are full of fat people lying on couches.

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