Last night our family sat down to watch a little television --- actually we probably watch too much television --- and America's Funniest Videos (AFV) came on. It didn't take long for us to switch to another program after a reminder from both my wife and my son of how painful it is to watch this program. It seems our society goes to great lengths to poke fun at the misfortune of others. As far as AFV goes, many of the video clips show people doing stupid things that could (and probably do much of the time) result in an injury. Knowing what I know about the North American injury statistics and the worst-case scenario that an injury can bring, I found myself wincing at most of the video clips for the short time we tuned into AFV. Is this where we've come to as a society?

The other day, I received a PowerPoint presentation from a friend that was entitled "The Safety at Work Awards" displaying all sorts of odd, risk-taking workplace activities from around the world. For instance, one of the slides showed a man with a seat cushion on his head which apparently took the place of a hard hat. Another slide showed an image of a man welding, holding a piece of cardboard in front of his face to shield the sparks. Yet another showed a person with a plastic bag wrapped around his face to prevent him from inhaling toxic fumes from the activity he was engaged in.

Don't get me wrong --- I really can't be too critical. I used to enjoy shows like AFV and chuckle at images like the ones in the PowerPoint I received until I became educated as to the human and financial costs our unintentional injury epidemic. Now I see how far we've got to go to transform our culture to point where injury prevention is a core value and shows like AFV are no longer acceptable.