Bad Car-Ma?

Yes, I am starting to think I have bad car karma (or car-ma?): four cars wrecked in a time span of about ten years. I don't know if it should be a consolation that none of the wrecks were caused by me except by the fact that my car was on the road: two red light runners broadsiding me, once rear-ended by a semi and once, my parked car was totaled by a hit-and-run driver in front of my house.

Driving out in the country at dawn or dusk during this time of the year is like playing the lottery, except that the odds are much better to hit a deer than to win the powerball jackpot. I have a colleague who hit a fawn while riding his bike in the dark (he did have a bike light turned on). He did not even see it, just noticed that he hit something just before he kissed the asphalt. He went back and found Bambi, with mama deer still trying to administer CPR ...

Though it's not only the deer, young drivers are almost as dangerous (ours looked more like 70, though). Strib this morning had this terrible accident where an 18-year old crossing the I35 median in Forest Lake, hitting an oncoming vehicle. Makes me want to avoid driving altoghether ... Canoeing is way safer, even considering the occasional hang-up on a rock.

Coincidentally, Minnesota Public Radio had the following as their "Question of the Day:" Do you feel safe as a pedestrian in the Twin Cities? in response to our metropolitan area being selected as one of the safest for pedestrians. Click the link to see the answers to that question, including my own. Guess which way the answers are leaning ... I would dread to live in one of the cities at the bottom of that list.