Hey folks, J.C. here. And today I just wanna take a minute to have a conversation about something that I hold near and dear that I see too often this morning, just a normal morning driving down, just one of our local city streets. And you see the road all blocked off lots of police activity, and you look ahead. as you're in the detour, you see multiple vehicles that were involved in a crash and crashes happen all the time. You see it a lot.
This is a stretch of street that I believe has a 35 or 40 mile an hour speed limit. So you would never think that crashes would be too devastating. Although a lot of vehicles aren't built well, these days, a lot of vehicles are smaller, but even so you would never think that. you would see a car covered in a cloth because inside there's a fatality in a stretch of road again, that has a 40 mile an hour speed limit. But we see this too often and it's happening more and more.
And you have to ask yourself the question, can these accidents be avoided? And the answer is absolutely 100%. Cars are being built to go faster and faster. The average person can go out and buy a car today that has 3, 4, 500 horsepower way more horsepower than the average should be in control of. Oftentimes we see over zealous. Parents will go out and buy their children who are not even qualified to drive a go-kart at the point in their life when they receive their driver's license.
but they'll go out and buy their kids a high powered Mustang or any other car with way too much horsepower, even scarier is when we see parents that will go out and buy their young men cafe racing motorcycles. And I understand the need for parents to want their kids to have a great life and fun and excitement, but oftentimes it ends in tragedy. Now I know nothing about the crash. The individual that is deceased in the vehicle that is covered.
But the one thing I do know is that many accidents that I've come across throughout my lifetime. And at one time I was in the position to be called when those crashes used to take place in certain areas that it's just a travesty that people take the responsibility of driving. So lightly, oftentimes not paying attention. Oftentimes speed. Driving erratically running stop signs, running red lights. Everybody's in a hurry. These days.
There's really no need to be in a hurry, just leave earlier, or just plan on being late, but we've gotta take more responsibility for our driving and it doesn't matter whether you're young or older, you have a responsibility. And if you're not gonna take the responsibility for protecting yourself seriously, then take the responsibility of protecting others serious. because we're not the only ones out there. We have mothers with children in vehicles.
We have parents who have their children out in the road and we're all in this together. So frankly, slow the heck down, stop rushing, start paying attention. And everybody needs to take driving very seriously because there's more fatalities on an annual basis from driving than many things. In 2020, there was almost 40,000 deaths in the United States. That's 11 deaths for every a hundred thousand individuals.
And I think out of the 40,000 deaths, just an assumption is that if everybody slowed down, got more responsible, started paying more attention and took driving to be the serious thing that it is because you're driving a missile that weighs anywhere from 2,500. Up to 10,000 pounds and you've gotta take that responsibility seriously because otherwise yourself or others, more importantly, others. Can be injured and killed if you're doing negligent driving. Hey, that's all I have to say about it.
Just thought, but hopefully it's a thought that for some of you brings to your attention, that we have to be more responsible for the lives and the safety of others. If we're not gonna be safe for ourselves, I hope you have a great afternoon. This is J.C. Owens and I am out.