Warm Leatherette

No sooner had we discussed vehicle fatalities (below) than our friends (& enablers) at the AP (via MSNBC) brought us up to date:

Preliminary figures being released by the government Monday show that 37,313 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes last year. That's 9.1 percent lower than the year before, when 41,059 died, and the fewest since 1961, when there were 36,285 deaths.

Still more impressive than the twenty thousand or so annual firearm deaths. But no figures on the walking (or not) dead from accidents. Or ammunition.

"The silver lining in a bad economy is that people drive less, and so the number of deaths go down," said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "Not only do they drive less but the kinds of driving they do tend to be less risky — there's less discretionary driving."

Sounds like more mouths to feed to us. Remember, every silver lining is surrounded by a dark, impenetrable wall of cloudy matter.

NB: Good taste prevailed. No image of blood-spattered asphalt (or worse).