Every year, more than 20 million children and teens go to the doctor as a result of unintentional injuries. You can avoid these accident-related injuries by breaking the chain of events that cause them.

Home accidents are one of the main causes of death and injury. And many are completely preventable! To start, clean up any water, or other liquid, that spills on the floor so that no one slips because of it. Slippery floors are dangerous as well. Be careful wearing socks on stairs and other areas that are not carpeted. Also, don’t leave clutter around, especially on the stairs where people can trip and seriously injure themselves.

Don’t put an electrical appliance in, or near, water and don’t touch an electrical appliance if you are standing or bathing in water. Why? Because water conducts electricity (remember those science experiments?) and you can be seriously injured or even die from an electric shock.  (For more details, see the post below on electrical safety.)

Of course, accidents also happen outside of the house. Cell phones and other handheld gadgets that distract us are a major cause of accidents. 

In 2015, 391,000 injuries were caused in distracted driving related accidents. In that same year, distracted driving was cited as a major factor in 3,477 traffic deaths

(Source: https://www.teensafe.com/distracted-driving/100-distracted-driving-facts-and-statistics-2018/)

No surprise that texting is the biggest culprit in distracting drivers. One moment with your eyes off the road can cause someone, maybe you, to lose a life as shown in this video http://time.com/53563/chilling-texting-and-driving-ad-dot/. 

That text can wait until you (or the person who is driving) can pull over. 

Texting is not just dangerous when driving either. According to Healthline.com, texting while walking causes people to bump into walls, fall down stairs, trip over clutter and step into traffic. Thousands of people are treated in emergency rooms from accidents while being distracted by texting. (That number may even be higher because people may be embarrassed to admit what really happened.) 

This video says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl0JojWH1rQ

Make sure that when you are walking, especially when you are crossing the street, you pay attention to what is in front of you and who is around you. This means waiting to text or make a call when you are in a safe place or can stand still. And it means that you might have to take your headphones off when crossing the street so that you can hear!