The most likely threat to your life might just be you

Do you ever feel you are your own worst enemy when it comes to putting yourself at risk for injury? Maybe you tried to put out a grease fire on your stove with water and inadvertently caused a larger blaze. How about taking an uncalculated risk while driving and almost lost control and crashed?   

You may think unintentional injuries are regulated only for those looking to become popular on the internet by doing outrageous stunts or from young people who do not know any better about their actions. In fact, unintentional injuries are the number one cause of death for people between the ages of one to 44. Car crashes and drowning are the top two causes of unintentional injuries with poisoning not far behind. For people in that age bracket, there were 61,749 people who died due to an unintentional injury. That is twice as many as people who died from both heart disease and cancer combined.

Keeping yourself protected from experiencing an unintentional injury only takes a little effort on your part. Here are a few things you can do immediately to hopefully not add to the amount of people being injured or killed due to an unintentional injury.

While at home:

• Install smoke alarms in every room of your house and regularly test them.
• Equip your home with a carbon monoxide detector.
• Check to make sure indoor appliances are working correctly.
• Do not use a gas stove or oven to heat your home.
• Make sure chimneys are clear.
• Keep a fire extinguisher handy in your home.

While in your car:

• Wear your seat belt at all times.
• Do not drive distracted.
• Make sure child car seats are installed and used properly.
• Obey all traffic laws.

While on your bike:

• Make sure the bike is in working condition before riding.
• Check to make sure the seat and handlebars are secure.
• Check to make sure the tires are properly inflated.
• Test the brakes to make sure they are functioning properly.
• Have plenty of reflectors, especially if you are riding at night. 

Much of this advice may seem like things you have heard before or things you roll your eyes at because they seem so obvious. However, with the amount of injuries and deaths that happen because these basic precautions are not done, the reminders bear repeating.