The tragedies at Virginia Tech and Fort Hood have a lot of people talking. Some are saying it was all the school's fault. Some say it was the school police at fault. Some say there should have been stricter gun laws. Some are trying to find a link between Islam and violence. Everyone seems to have his own axe to grind.

The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that it was a horrible event. 32 people died and the news media told us about it, repeatedly, in great detail. For days, every newscast carried the "breaking" story. 13 people died at Fort Hood and, once again, the media was there to give us every detail.

How about a little Reality Check. First, the tragedy of those people's deaths is real. Nothing can minimize that or the pain that their friends and family have gone through and will continue to go through.

But what about the 100+ other people who were killed each of those days? No, I'm not talking about the war in Iraq/Afghanistan. That's the subject of another Reality Check. I'm talking about the people who were killed on our highways in traffic accidents.

OK, stop yawning. I know you're tired of hearing about it, but the fact remains that we kill over 40,000 people per year, year after year, decade after decade. It averages out to more than 100 people per day. 100 innocent people dead. 100 innocent people dead yesterday. 100 innocent people dead today. 100 innocent people dead tomorrow. And on. And on. And on.

Why bring this up? Why don't we spend a little of the energy and resources we've been using expressing our shock and outrage at the unfair and unnecessary deaths of the 32 people at VT and the 13 at Fort Hood, each a one-time event, and start using that energy to help minimize the much-higher number of innocents who die every day on our highways. Now there's a radical idea!

• Are you tired of the rising cost of gasoline?

  How about the rising cost of electricity? The rising cost of natural gas? The rising cost of energy, in general? Maybe it's time to look at solar power again.

   

• Solar power is an effective way YOU can collect and use energy in the form of electricity.

  Stored in batteries, you can use that energy for most all your energy needs. Anything that uses electricity can be operated with batteries, but some common sense needs to be applied here. Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should do it.