Salmonella by the Dashboard Light

Sometimes you just have to whistle at the irony. I was doing a Google search to find how much attention was being paid to safety in the rage to discuss small cars and gas mileage.

I had the idea that there would be more media focus on the salmonella tomatoes (killing perhaps 5) than on the move to small cars (killing thousands). So, I did a search on "$4.00 gas" and "safety." A healthy 50K results came up and I dug in to read the first few. The first listing was useless, having the "safety" entry in a inane flame among the comments. The second produced the whistle. The main article discussed the usual techniques for maximizing gas mileage. The irony was in the location of the "safety" hit. It was in a side list of categories of previous articles, the group was "food safety."

Somehow, I suspect if I did a search on "salmonella" and "safety", I wouldn't get much on the effect car size has on survival chances in car crashes.

Regardless of the lack of media interest, don't be foolish. Buy a mid-size or larger car. In an average driving life in America, you have about an even chance of getting in a potentially fatal car accident.

"When hunting rabbits in lion country, beware of lions. When hunting lions in rabbit country you may ignore the rabbits." Eat tomatoes and buy big cars.