Welcome to 2009: Whenever I’m about to do something, I think “would an idiot do that?” and if they would, I do not do that thing.

With the slightest bit of dilly-dallying, the dawn of the new year has nearly completed its global circle. It looks like we might make it through 2008 with *only* 114* LODD's, down from 118 last year and the second-lowest since LODD criteria were changed in 2004. I'll spare you boilerplate "wear your seatbelt, don't eat so many cheeseburgers" lectures and instead remind you that, ultimately, you have to choose how much you want to live/how willing you are to die. Since the vast majority of us run EMS calls I am sure we can all agree that people who make acutely poor choices wind up dead or maimed and people who make chronically bad decisions wind up not being able to take care of themselves. We need to recognize (meaning realize AND internalize AND believe) that our actions are just as real and that we should avoid making bad decisions.

So do you want to be a bed-ridden case for the necessity of four-man staffing at public assist calls? Do you want to give your brothers and sisters years of nightmares about having to pull your ass out of a collapsed vacant business? Or do you want to lose sleep every night for the rest of your life because of your aching joints and muscles thanks to bouncing your face off the windshield?

There is nothing heroic about being dead for no good reason and there's nothing cool about living your life in pain. So let's all try to bring the level of stupidity down to an irreducible minimum this year. As Dwight Schrute said, "Whenever I’m about to do something, I think “would an idiot do that?” and if they would, I do not do that thing."

So that's my safety soapbox. This a blog about homeland security AND the fire service, but occasionally it will digress slightly into one or the other, as it has here.

*Edit- A career firefighter in Georgia was killed last night en route to a structure fire when his apparatus rolled over less than half an hour before midnight.