I'm definitely not a daredevil or an enthusiast of extreme sports, but I do think that a majority of people, in this country and elsewhere, have become obsessed with safety to the point of fanaticism. I say fanaticism because we are often trying so hard to create safe conditions in one area of our lives that we create other dangerous conditions by doing so.

    A good example is the government spending billions to install full body scanners at the airports. Not only is there no real proof that they will be more effective at catching terrorists than the older metal detectors, but they emit radiation known to be harmful.

    Another example is the safety seats we install in cars for toddlers. These are supposed to make car travel much safer than letting them sit in the actual car seat on on a parents lap, yet those same toddlers can sit on their parents lap when they are flying across country in an airplane, so some inconsistency here. Also, I saw on the news recently that a safety group found that these safety seats often contain harmful chemicals, so it's questionable that they are improving kids safety at all.

    And probably the worst example of all, the way many of us are spraying everything with anti-bacterial products from a rather irrational fear that bacteria are all waiting for an opportunity to pounce on us and eat us for lunch. The result of this fanaticism is that we kill off many beneficial bacteria like the ones that help us digest our food or attack insects, but we are also making the truly harmful one resistant to many antibiotics. As I am writing this, there is a large recall occurring of ground turkey meat because some is contaminated with salmonella, and not just ordinary salmonella, but a variety that has become resistant.

    And do we really need police ticketing people for not wearing seat belts in the car or a helmet when riding a motorcycle? Shouldn't those types of personal safety issues be left to the individual and the police be allowed to deal with real crime?

    One of my biggest fears though is that this obsession with safety will see us continue to give away our freedoms bit by bit until they are all gone and we will have no freedom and only an illusion of being safe.