School buses transport thousands of children every day. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), they are the safest vehicles on the road. This is due to the safety advancements school buses have undergone throughout decades of service and in response to several tragedies taking place. Collectively, these advancements have helped save lives and prevent accidents. Here is a list of 10 tragedies that resulted in safety advancements for school buses.

Related: Top 10 Deadliest Industrial Accidents That Were Avoidable

10 Railroad Crossings

Utah is known for many things, but a little-known fact about the state is that it happens to be the location of one of the worst transportation accidents in history. On the morning of December 1, 1938, a terrible blizzard swept through the Salt Lake Valley. Farrold Silcox was a school bus driver who had been driving for three years. He had 39 passengers after making all of his stops. On his way to Jordan High School in Sandy, there was a railroad crossing. Farrold stopped and looked both ways, then proceeded over the tracks.

As the bus was midway across the tracks, a freight train slammed into the bus, dragging it half a mile (0.8 kilometers) north before it was able to stop, killing 24 passengers and the driver. It was determined that the blizzard had hindered the bus driver’s ability to see the incoming train. Now, whenever a commercial vehicle is carrying passengers, the driver is required to stop and open the door and window in order to listen for an approaching train.^[1]

9 Manufacturing

School buses have evolved a lot since they were first introduced in the late 19th century. Every iteration of a school bus has been an improvement on the previous one in regard to safety. The next entry is the cause for one of these changes. On the morning of May 21, 1976, Evan Prothero drove a 1950 Crown with 53 passengers. After traveling for an hour, a buzzer began going off in the driver’s compartment, so he decided to exit the highway.

As he made his exit, he realized he was unable to lower his speed. The bus then hit a guardrail and went over its side, falling off the ramp and into a dirt field below. This caused the roof of the bus to collapse, resulting in 28 deaths and several injuries. The NTSB determined that the deaths were attributed to the construction of the bus itself. Regulations later required manufacturers to build sturdier buses that could withstand rollovers and other damage.^[2]

8 Emergency Exits

The following entry resulted in an enormous impact on school bus safety even though the bus was not actually on a school activity trip. On the evening of May 14, 1988, several children and their chaperones were returning from a trip to King’s Island. Over an hour into the trip home, the bus was hit head-on by a pickup driving northbound on the southbound lanes. The collision of the truck on the bus punctured the fuel tank, igniting the gasoline inside. This set the bus ablaze instantly.

The children scrambled to the rear, which was the only emergency exit. In total, 27 people lost their lives. When the authorities arrived at the scene, it was determined that the driver of the truck was intoxicated. He was charged and sentenced to prison for 16 years. Later, the state of Kentucky, as well as the country, passed legislation that called for more emergency exits on school buses, claiming if the bus had been better equipped, many more lives could have been saved.^[3]

7 Brake Training

Like the previous entry, the school bus in question was not on a school trip, but it was transporting several children at the time of its accident. On July 31, 1991, a 1989 Thomas school bus driven by Richard A. Gonzalez Jr. made its way down a steep mountain road. The bus began picking up speed, and he was unable to decelerate. As it continued descending the mountain, the driver started honking at the vehicle in front of him in an attempt to signal something was wrong.

The bus then veered into the opposite lane, passing the vehicle up. It then came to a bend in the road, but Richard was unable to negotiate the curve. The bus skidded, leaving the road at a high rate of speed, rolling down an embankment, and killing seven and injuring 53 others. The accident was largely attributed to the driver’s inability to properly operate the vehicle on a steep grade. In light of the accident, training was improved for drivers to make sure they knew how to travel on mountainous roads.^[4]

6 Child Check System

Some accidents are a result of someone not following protocols. In this instance, that resulted in one of the greatest tragedies involving school buses. On the morning of September 11, 2015, Armando Ramirez, a school bus driver for Public Transportation Cooperative in Whittier, California, started his route, picking up his three students and then heading to school to drop them off. After dropping them off, he returned to the transportation yard as usual and went home.

Several hours later, Paul Lee’s body was found lying in a pool of his own vomit inside Armando’s bus. He had unfortunately failed to notice that Paul had never got off the bus that morning to go to school. Once at the yard, Armando failed to follow protocols and check the bus to make sure there was no one in there. It was later determined that the bus driver’s negligence was to blame for the death of the student. As a result, a new law was passed in California stating that all school buses must have a child check system installed to force drivers to check their school buses.^[5]

5 Training for Hijacking

The following entry was a horrible experience for everyone involved, but it led to many advancements in the way these situations are handled. On July 15, 1976, Ed Ray, a 55-year-old school bus driver, picked up his students from school. Once on the road, he saw a van blocking the street with a man standing beside it. He slowed down to a stop; the man then approached the bus, holding a weapon. He took over the bus and drove it a mile down the road, where he met with two other men who helped him conceal the bus and take all 26 kids and the bus driver hostage.

The kidnappers drove them around for 11 hours in two modified cargo vans, eventually arriving at a rock quarry in Livermore, California—100 miles (161 kilometers) away. There, they transferred the hostages into a moving van buried in the quarry. Fortunately, the driver and an older boy were able to escape from the now-buried and collapsing van and seek help.

The men were caught and arrested shortly after. Today, several districts and transportation companies train their drivers on what to do if they are hijacked, and many buses now have GPS and video cameras in them, which prove to be very valuable in such a situation.^[6]

4 Emergency Response Teams

It’s not always the actual accident that causes death. Sometimes, they are due to aftereffects of the accident; this is evident in the next entry. It was February 28, 1958, and John Alex DeRossett was a 27-year-old bus driver tasked with transporting students to school in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. That morning, he picked up his students and made his way down U.S. Route 23. On the road, there was a tow truck attempting to pull out a pickup from a ditch. As the bus made its way down the road, it clipped the tow truck and made a hard left. This caused the bus to go down an embankment and into the Big Sandy River.

Twenty-two students were able to escape from the single rear emergency exit as the bus was sinking. The remaining 26 students and the bus driver were then dragged down the river and disappeared. The National Guard was dispatched on March 5, 1958. The search lasted days, which caused criticism for being too slow. This brought a change to disaster response by the creation of a disaster response team for the county, making it the first of its kind and inspiring many other similar response teams across the country.^[7]

3 School Bus Yellow and Two-Way Radios

The early days of school buses were much more challenging, especially during inclement weather. The following entry is a prime example that devastated one community. Carl Miller set out one beautiful morning in March 1931 to transport his students to school. But by the time he had reached the school, the weather changed drastically, and a blizzard ensued. Carl, along with the only two teachers at the school, decided it would be best if the students returned home for the day. Carl then began down the road, but on his way, he took a wrong turn.

At one point, the bus fell into a ditch, and the engine stalled, stranding the bus driver and its 22 passengers. Carl decided to leave the two older children in charge and set out on foot to look for help. That afternoon, two men found the bus and rescued the children. Unfortunately, the tragedy claimed six lives, including the bus driver’s. After the event, it was determined that school buses should sport a uniform, highly visible color, which became the school bus yellow we know today. In addition, two-way radios were integrated into all school transportation vehicles.^[8]

2 Fire Suppression System

It’s easy to think that school buses are so advanced today there is no possible way to make them any safer. This next entry shows that it is far from the truth. Megan Klindt was a 16-year-old student who attended Riverside Community High School. She left her home to wait for her school bus on December 12, 2017. After boarding the bus, the driver, 74-year-old Donald Hendricks, attempted to turn around on the street. He backed up, but unfortunately, the road was narrow, and he went too far back, resulting in the rear of the bus falling into a ditch. Hendricks attempted to get the bus out of the ditch by accelerating, but to no use; the bus wouldn’t budge.

Moments later, the bus was engulfed in flames. The fire was seen by Megan’s family, who quickly called 911. Unfortunately, the fire killed both Megan and Hendricks. A team was sent out by the NTSB to investigate the accident. They concluded the bus driver was unable to safely operate the bus while backing up, and the fire was determined to have developed due to the ignition of fuel on the engine’s turbocharger after it overheated. After the accident, the recommendation was to have all school buses outfitted with a fire suppression system.^[9]

1 Responsibility of Operator

Most school bus accidents can be blamed on a malfunctioning bus or an incompetent bus driver. Unfortunately, some accidents happen from sheer bad luck. Royal J. Randle was a 24-year-old World War II veteran who worked for the Lake Chelan School District. On November 26, 1945, Royal did his usual route consisting of picking up students on the west side of Lake Chelan. As Royal drove his school bus through the lakeside roads, it began to snow. Since there was very little snow on the pavement, he didn’t bother putting on snow chains.

The falling snow quickly accumulated on the school bus’s windshield. This caused the windshield wipers to stop working. As it kept accumulating, it caused visibility issues for Royal, and he decided to pull the bus off the road in order to clear the obstruction. As he pulled the bus over, though, he hit a rock, which caused the bus to veer into the 30-foot (9-meter) embankment, rolling over twice and coming to rest with the front end of the bus 5 feet (1.5 meters) underwater.

Five students and one adult were able to escape before the shifted weight of the bus caused it to sink into the lake headfirst. Within six days, divers found a total of seven bodies, including the bus driver’s. The search for the remainder of the passengers was called off shortly after, leaving nine children’s bodies unaccounted for.

The accident was investigated by the Washington State Patrol, who concluded that the poor visibility caused the driver to crash and veer off the road, ultimately driving the bus into the embankment. They went further by saying the school district had the responsibility of discontinuing the operation of the bus when there was inclement weather. Today, bus drivers, as well as the school districts, are responsible for judging when weather conditions are unsafe for pupil transport.^[10]

Two of the names on this list are well-known. However, the others are lesser-known but no less as important. All these inventions, potentially dangerous in themselves, have saved lives, often many, and attracted great attention thanks to the extreme, perilous tests the inventors themselves undertook to prove the safety of their inventions.

10 Elisha Otis

Despite a series of jobs in various businesses, Elisha Otis (1811–1861) never met with much success until 1853, when he thrilled onlookers during an event described as “a dramatic demonstration.”

Riding an open platform up a scaffold resembling the framework of a gigantic guillotine, Otis stood, among barrels and crates, gazing down at the crowd that had assembled to watch the show. People were suspicious of the safety of elevators, fearing that such contraptions might fall, injuring or killing their occupants. Otis’s demonstration would dispel such worries—if he survived.

As the assembly looked on, Otis struck the rope attached to the elevator with an ax, severing it. Surely, in the resulting fall, he would be severely injured, if not killed, the horrified crowd must have thought.

Instead, Otis proved the efficacy of his brake: his safety system worked. Even with the rope severed, the brake prevented the lift from plunging to its destruction and Otis’s injury or death. The public was persuaded that elevators equipped with his invention were safe, and Otis installed his first passenger-carrying safety elevator in a New York department store four years later.

According to Big Ideas That Changed the World, 1.7 million Otis elevators are in service worldwide, not only in skyscrapers but also in such famous landmarks as the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty.^[1]

9 Jonas Salk

“History of Salk: About Jonas Salk,” a 2002 article on the Salk Institute for Biological Studies website, recounts how Dr. Salk (1914–1995) developed and tested the vaccine that has virtually eradicated polio.

As an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, Salk learned from his mentor, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., about the process of developing vaccines. Then, as the director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Salk put his knowledge to use, developing a vaccine against the polio virus.

His approach, using an inactivated polio virus to stimulate vaccine recipients’ immunity systems, was “contrary to the era’s prevailing scientific opinion.” There was also concern that such an approach might infect those who received immunizations, causing severe illness or even death. To test his vaccine and to allay the public’s fears, Salk vaccinated himself, his wife, their children, his lab assistant, and “volunteers who had not had polio.”

His test was a success, as were those conducted in 1954 on “one million children, ages six to nine,.. .known as the Polio Pioneers.” Salk refused to patent the vaccine or accept money for it, “preferring it [to] be distributed as widely as possible.” In 1963, he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.^[2]

8 Garrett Morgan

Among other devices, Garrett Morgan (1877–1963), the son of former slaves, not only invented the “three-way traffic signal” but also a fireproof “safety hood.” According to an article on the America Comes Alive website, Morgan was aware that firefighters could fight fires inside buildings only until they were nearly overcome by smoke. After that, they would have to go outside for fresh air, unable to continue their fight against the fire until they recovered.

In a fire, Morgan knew that breathable air was close to the floor since air warmed by the fire would rise. He reasoned that if he could find a way to draw this air into a “breathing mask” worn by a firefighter, the firefighter could remain inside the burning building longer. As the website article explains, “the safety hood he created had two tubes. One sent fresher air from the floor level up into the breathing mask. The second used a valve to prevent the exhaled air from being inhaled again.”

In 1914. aided by investors, Morgan founded the National Safety Device Company to make and sell the fire safety hoods. A gold medal awarded at the Second International Exposition of Safety and Sanitation boosted sales, with New York City’s fire department and others purchasing the device. The hoods proved safe to use during a subway fire rescue.

In 1916, a much more impressive test of the hoods occurred involving the inventor himself and his brother. Cleveland Waterworks laborers were working in a tunnel when an explosion occurred, trapping some and killing others. Two attempts to rescue them failed when overcome by dense smoke and gases, four members of the initial seven-member rescue team died, and the second, eleven-member team was trapped inside the tunnel.

Morgan and his brother Frank tested the mettle of his invention when they joined the rescue effort, donning Morgan’s safety hoods. Among the dead men, the brothers located and rescued the earlier “rescue squad members who were still living.” As a result of their participation, “the Morgan brothers, aided by several volunteers, made additional multiple trips into the mine, rescuing workers one by one. Unfortunately, none of the original 11 workers could have survived as the tunnel had collapsed on them. It was several weeks before those bodies could be retrieved.”

As the website article notes, “the gas masks that were made for use in World War I were modeled after Morgan’s safety hood.”^[3]

7 Steve Gass

Steve Gass bet one of his own fingers that his invention, SawStop, would really work. A U.S. patent lawyer, inventor, and a woodworker with a Ph.D. in physics, Gass was aware that table saws cut off operators’ fingers up to ten times a day. He wanted to create a safety feature to prevent more people from undergoing this horrific, traumatic experience.

Gass’s SawStop differentiates between flesh and wood because the former conducts electricity while the latter does not. Gass’s SawStop “induces a high-frequency electrical signal on the blade of a table saw and monitors this signal for changes caused by contact between the blade and a user’s body.” When a change in the electrical signal is detected, SawStop can halt the saw blade “in 1/1000th of a second or less” by forcing “a brake into the teeth of the blade.”

Gass’s video demonstration of SawStop at work proves his invention’s effectiveness. He stuck his own finger into the saw, and he came away unscathed, his finger undamaged and intact. With neither blood nor pain to show for his trouble, Gass succeeded in demonstrating that, as the video’s narrator comments, he is, indeed, “a man who has faith in his creation.” ^[4]

6 Troy Hurtubise

AIR staff writer Alice Shirrell Kaswell reported that Troy Hurtubise (1963–2001), dressed in the Ursus Mark VI suit of armor, went head-to-head, or “mano a ursus,” with a reluctant 585-kilogram (1,290-pound) adult Kodiak bear. The predator (the bear, not Hurtubise) was leery of his adversary because “Troy Hurtubise looked so scary in his suit.” Only after ten minutes did the Kodiak bear approach him, Kaswell says, while a 157-kilogram (346-pound) grizzly showed no inclination whatsoever to fight the inventor.

When the Kodiak bear finally mustered enough courage to come after Hurtubise, and he “could smell [the animal’s] breath through [his] helmet,” the inventor of the virtually indestructible body shell admitted that he felt terrified and his heart began pounding. The bear’s trainer intervened, refusing to allow a fight between the inventor and the Kodiak bear.

However, the trainer did let Hurtubise enter the grizzly bear’s cage, confident, Hurtubise said, “that even if he took me down, she wouldn’t be able to penetrate the suit, even if she tried all day.” The grizzly was too scared to do anything more but stand “on his hind legs and [bare his] bicuspids.” Since Hurtubise had invented his suit “specifically for grizzly bears, and not Kodiaks, a behemoth subspecies,” he felt vindicated.

An episode of the American TV series Extra, demonstrating the near-invincibility of his suit, made of titanium plastic, rubber, and chain mail, is certainly impressive. Looking something like an oversize robot in his armor, Hurtubise is struck repeatedly in the head with a large stick until it breaks against his helmet.

The results of some of the challenges of his suit were equally impressive. The blast of a 12-gauge shotgun bounces harmlessly off his midriff. A three-hundred-pound log attached to chains and “launched dead center at his chest” merely knocks him down. A three-ton truck traveling at thirty miles per hour runs into him and knocks him down, causing him to roll over the ground. Finally, he throws himself down a ravine, tumbling to the bottom without a scratch.

It seemed doubtful that a grizzly could have put the preservationist to any more of a test than those he’d already passed with flying colors.^[5]

5 George Stephenson

On May 25, 1812, a massive explosion occurred inside the Low Main seam at the Felling Colliery between Gateshead and Jarrow in County Durham, UK, when an “ignition of fire-damp” triggered a coal dust explosion so devastating that it “was heard up to 4 miles away.” Ninety-two lives were lost. As a result, George Stephenson (1781–1848), a mechanic who had worked as a firefighter and a brakeman, started experimenting with a safety lamp that could employ a naked flame without igniting an explosion.

The result was his Gordie Lamp. Based on the containment of “burnt air above the flame, and [the permitting of] the firedamp to come in below in a small quantity to be burnt as it came in,” the lamp proved successful. This was especially true after a flaw (“glass breakage”) was overcome when safety glass was later invented.

As his biography reveals, George Stephenson, the inventor himself, in the company of two witnesses, Nicholas Wood and John Moodie, descended into the Killingworth mine shaft, carrying Stephenson’s lamp “to one of the galleries.” These structures were built to contain and isolate highly explosive carbureted hydrogen, so it would not spread into other areas of the mine. There, he found, hissing gas was issuing into the gallery from a fissure in the roof. Despite the presence of the dense gas, the lamp had not caused an explosion.

To test the lamp further, the gas was “collected” inside a “partition” so that it would be even more “liable to ignition.” Both Wood and Moodie, judging the demonstration to be extremely dangerous, retreated to safety, where they watched Stephenson advance, his lamp lit, to “within a few inches of the fissure,” where the current of gas extinguished the lamp’s flame “without exploding the foul air which surrounded the lamp.”

Stephenson had proved, beyond a doubt, that he had invented a safety lamp that was, indeed, safe to use, even in a mine shaft polluted with flammable gas.^[6]

4 Sir Humphry Davy

Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1828) invented several products, including a safety lamp, but he personally tested an early anesthetic procedure that he recommended. As an article on The Public Domain Review website explains, “the young English chemist and inventor and future president of the Royal Society began a very radical bout of self-experimentation to determine the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide, more commonly known as ‘Laughing Gas.’”

His assistant, Dr. Kinglake, and Davy collected gas from heated ammonium nitrate crystals in “a green oiled-silk bag.” After passing the bag through steam to remove impurities, Davy inhaled the purified gas through a mouthpiece. He seemed delighted by the results, describing the effects of the gas as exciting “giddiness, flushed cheeks, intense pleasure,” and, in the inventor’s own words, “sublime emotion connected with highly vivid ideas.”

He so enjoyed the experiment that he repeated it numerous times, even going as far as constructing what he called an “air-tight breathing box’” in which he would sit for hours inhaling enormous quantities of gas, having even more intense experiences. One of these sessions nearly cost him his life, but the danger associated with breathing the gas didn’t prevent him from sharing it with such friends as the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. The poets, likewise, recorded their experiences, which Davy collected, along with his own, and published in 1800 as Researches, Chemical and Philosophical.

In 1800, Davy recognized the gas’s “analgesic properties, named it nitrous oxide,” and, despite his near-death from having abused the gas, recommended its medical use to relieve the pain of surgery.^[7]

3 Richard Davis

A Detroit mugging led Richard Davis to invent a new “concealable lightweight body armor.” At the time, only flack jackets were available, and criminals could tell, from the bulky appearance of the jackets, that a police officer was wearing the protective gear. Instead of firing at the officer’s chest, the criminal would shoot the officer in the head.

After inventing his thin, lightweight, concealable, metal-free body armor, Davis demonstrated its effectiveness. First, he laid the vest on the ground and shot it with a handgun. Then, he mounted the vest on a post and shot it with a rifle. The body armor passed both tests, but Davis had a third, potentially fatal, test in mind as well.

Donning the gear, he held a handgun toward his abdomen, only inches away, and shot himself before spinning around and firing the weapon at bowling pins lined up on a table to his left. The gunshot, he said, stung “enough to make you mad” and broke the skin, but he was otherwise unharmed.

His invention’s tightly layered nylon with multiple interlaced fibers proved effective, creating “a mesh so dense it dissipates the explosive energy,” preventing the bullet from penetrating the weave. He repeated his demonstration 200 times. The first time, he said, was for science, but “the next two hundred [were] for show business.”

As Professor David Eisenbach, Columbia University historian, noted, Davis had not put his “money where [his] mouth is, but “his life where [his] mouth is.”^[8]

2 Jeremiah Raber

While Davis protected the heart (and other vital organs), Jeremiah Raber protected the family jewels. As Ben Hooper observes, Raber took “a bullet to the groin to prove [his] athletic cup’s strength.” His product, the aptly named Nutzshell groin protector, was originally designed for Ultimate Fighting Championship combatants.”

It seems that, like Davis, the Missouri inventor knew the need for publicity and, to promote his Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of his product, he was prepared to put his cup and his own good name to the test by participating in a live, filmed demonstration in which his business partner—an avid hunter—Matt Heck shot a .22-caliber rifle at his groin while Raber sported one of their products. “Don’t try this at home,” Raber warns viewers.

With Raber’s blue jeans and fly unbuttoned and Raber holding the front of the waist apart, Heck, using transparent tape, forms an “X” over the athletic cup. Then, lying on the ground, behind a tripod-mounted rifle set atop a flat stone, Heck aims at his target. Then, Raber, wearing protective goggles, a bulletproof vest, and protective headgear gives him a two-thumbs-up gesture. Finally, the crack of the rifle shot is heard, and the screen goes dark.

As filming resumes, Raber is shown, jeans halfway down his thighs, adjusting the undamaged cup made of ballistic Kevlar. The video then shows the actual shot, as a bullet flicks harmlessly off the surface of the cup, which bounces slightly upon the bullet’s impact. As might be expected, puns abound in the narrator’s account of the demonstration.^[9]

1 Nicolas Senn

As James E. Pilcher notes in his peer-reviewed September 1888 article in Annals of Surgery, “The fertile mind of Professor Senn is notable for the originality of its conceptions.” One of these conceptions was Nicolas Senn’s (1844–1908) invention of a procedure to diagnose intestinal perforation. The idea occurred to him when Senn realized that a stomach or intestine wound could be discovered using a process similar to that by which “a plumber locates a leak in a gas pipe.”

Senn hit on the idea of inflating the intestines with a harmless “gas which would escape from the intestinal wound into the peritoneal cavity,” thus making its presence known to the surgeon using “some infallible test.” As a result of several experiments, Senn determined that a rubber balloon holding from 10 to 20 liters (2 to 4 gallons) would be the most efficient and safest instrument for “blowing the gas throughout the bowels for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes.”

One test subject was Senn himself, who discovered, personally, the physical sensations associated with having the gas blown throughout his intestines. He makes careful, detailed notes concerning his perceptions: “The distention of the colon caused simply a feeling of distention along its course. But as soon as the gas escaped into the ileum, colicky pains were experienced, which increased as insufflation advanced, and only ceased after all the gas had escaped, which was the case only after an hour and a half.” The experience, he observed, was distressing. However, his experiments, both on dogs and humans, himself included, “fully demonstrated the safety of pure hydrogen gas when employed in this manner.”

The infallible test by which the location of the perforation of the intestine was made known was provided by the escape of gas through the wound, which produced bubbles. To tell whether the escaping gas was hydrogen, it was ignited, after which the gas would produce “a slight explosive report, and burn with a characteristic blue flame.” The application of a match or lit candle to the escaping gas—a sure sign of the presence of a perforation in the intestine—has the added advantage of sterilizing the wound, making the process both “diagnostic and therapeutic.”^[10]

We laugh at urban myths and legends, often to joke about how stupid or ridiculous people are. It can be amusing to think about what insane things people can be led to believe, but sometimes it really isn’t a joke, and it isn’t funny at all. Many urban legends or conspiracies that are spread around cause people to try to self treat problems for which they should really see a doctor, distrust medicine in general, or take part in dangerous activities or practices that they have been led to believe are safe. It is important to always research what you are being told, especially when it comes to matters of health or safety, and inform others you know when they believe something false that could put them in a dangerous situation or endanger their health.

10. A Conspiracy Theory About AIDS Has Helped It Spread Further

For many years a conspiracy theory has proliferated among the black community: that the government actually created HIV and AIDS, and distributed it among those in the inner city to kill people of color. President Obama, then a Senator, actually went on television telling of the theories of his pastor Jeremiah Wright, who believed in such nonsense. The belief is so widespread that many black people today, and plenty of non-black people as well, believe this theory.

Of course, we know that AIDS was not a man made creation, but this hasn’t stopped the belief from causing great harm. The best way to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS is to catch it early and give people the right drugs for treatment and control of the condition, and for them to be informed of what they have. However, people are unlikely to go get treatment if they believe that the government caused it on purpose and wants them to suffer and die. This means people distrust the government and don’t go get checked when they suspect they may have it, causing it to spread further and further still. The best way to counter this kind of theory is with education – the government did not create such a deadly disease, and treatment options today are actually very good, especially if it is caught early.

9. The Myth About “Safety Belts Costing More Lives Than They Save”

Some people will go on about how they heard some cop somewhere claim that seat belts actually cost more lives than they save. Their theory generally goes that the seat belt could trap you in the car when it is on fire or something similar, with no way for you to get out. Experts in law enforcement who tend to deal with a lot of accidents have pointed out, though, that while you could have a rare situation where a seat belt makes it harder for someone to get out, that unconcscious people don’t even have a chance to try, and people without seat belts invariably end up unconcsious after a major accident. One policeman who dealt with a lot of accidents was once quoted as saying that he “never unbuckled a dead man.”

In other words, while someone may be able to find a strange, occasional case where a seatbelt caused someone to die in an accident, the vast majority of the time, the seat belt will greatly decrease your risk of fatalities. Sadly, many people get thrown from their vehicles and die in accidents because they believed this ludicrous rumor, and wanted to ensure they didn’t get trapped in their car. The issue is that the whole point of a seatbelt is basically to trap you in your car in the event of an accident, so you don’t get thrown clear of the vehicle.

8. People Held Chickenpox Parties Because They Thought It Had Immunization Benefits

Not that long ago, it was a much more commonly held belief among many people that if a child became infected with chicken pox as a child, it was now impossible for them to get shingles – a version of the disease that can come back as an adult and be much more painful and often life threatening. It would also be impossible for chicken pox to return, as it can only affect you once, ever. To this end, when it was found out that a nearby child had chicken pox, people would have parties where they made sure their kids got into contact with the infected child, so that they could quickly get their kids the pox and get it over with.

Unfortunately, this was founded on complete bunk. Chicken pox actually comes from a similar family of disease as herpes, and as you know, herpes keeps coming back. What this actually means is that giving a kid chicken pox when they are young, instead of immunizing them against shingles later in life, actually increases the chances of it happening to them. The good news is that with modern media, this myth has been busted more and more commonly, and the amount of people setting up these insane parties has dwindled to a much smaller number.

7. Drinking Alcohol To Cure A Hangover Is Only Going To Worsen Your Overall Health

One of the most common ideas in the culture of drinking booze, is that if you get a hangover, you can speed up your recovery process by adding a bit more booze to your morning the next day. Now, this is so common in popular culture and in real life that there are common drinks designed pretty much just for this “hair of the dog” cure. The most popular, of course, are the many variations of the Bloody Mary, which is basically a mix of some form of tomato juice, vodka, various spices, and a bunch of unecessary garnishes that will probably be discarded, but make the drinker look temporarily like a healthy person who likes to enjoy their vegetables – after a night of destroying one’s liver, this is probably psychologically comforting.

Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing to the idea that drinking will make your hangover go away quicker. The reason you sometimes feel better by drinking is because drinking alcohol dulls your senses in general, but this isn’t actually making you feel properly better or ending your hangover. At some point your body still has to finish processing out the toxins to get you better, and by using the hair of the dog method, you are actually just adding more toxins for your body to process.

6. Vaccine Deniers Really Are Bringing Back Deadly Diseases And We Should Be Worried

The MMR vaccine, which staves off measles, mumps, and rubella, and other vaccines, have been the source of controversy for a long time. However, in more modern times, a man named Andrew Wakefield is the biggest source of ill for the world of medicine in terms of vaccines. He published a paper back in the ’90s that was quickly discredited for awful methodologies and he had his medical license taken away. Unfortunately since then he has still given lectures and talks and done his best to stoke fear of vaccines all over the world.

In the United States, Measles has started to crop up seriously in Minnesota – an area Wakefield and his people have been laying their propaganda heavily. To make matters worse, we are seeing outbreaks of diseases we once thought we had beat all over the country, and they are all linked to vaccine deniers. These people spread ridiculous urban myths, some of which have been around since before Wakefield, that vaccines cause all kinds of crippling conditions for young children, including various forms of autism. Of course this has been entirely disproven, but many people still cling to the belief. Unfortunately many people find it easier to accept this idea that their child’s health problems are caused by vaccines, because life is easier when you have an obvious villain to blame for your problems, instead of trying to accept the sad truth that sometimes life just isn’t fair.

5. The Five Second Rule Has Probably Given Countless People Food Poisoning

Probably the most common health myth is the “five second rule.” Nearly everyone believes it, or some variation of it – some people believe in a one second or even ten second rule. However, while many people will chuckle about it as they say it, as if they sort of know it’s silly, many of us have seen people pick stuff up off the floor and then eat it citing the famous ‘rule’. The truth is that this rule did not come from anywhere official, and is purely an urban myth concocted perhaps by mothers with very clean floors who were trying not to waste food and convince their children it was alright.

However, the truth is that most floors, even those that look relatively clean, have a lot of germs and other bacteria. And the problem with this myth is that it really only takes a moment of exposure for those germs and bacteria to stick to whatever food item you dropped on the floor. It really doesn’t matter how long; if it touched the floor and you don’t know how clean it is, it would be smarter to simply throw the food away.

4. “Cough CPR” Has Possibly Caused The Deaths Of Heart Attack Sufferers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTdamYYqKxk

Cough CPR is a legend that has been spread around by pseudo-medical experts, which are a dime a dozen these days. Most of them have some random website that looks sort of official, and will talk about how evil big pharma is, while trying to sell you overpriced products that are basically placebo. This strange idea spread by the misinformed is very dangerous and could potentially be causing people who are suffering from a heart attack to think they can handle things on their own and not take the proper steps. The idea given by the people spreading this idea is that if the heartbeat is out of rhythm, you can cough forcefully to get it back to beating properly. The truth is that if you think you are having a heart attack, experts recommend taking some aspirin by chewing it and calling 911.

Now, this doesn’t mean that cough CPR is a completely useless idea; it actually does come from somewhere legitimate. It has just been horrifically misinterpreted by urban myth and medical fraudsters. Experts have said that theoretically a person who is experiencing certain issues where the heart is out of rhythm could keep themselves conscious for a short time by coughing, but it wouldn’t be much help and they would quickly pass out. However, after the emergency and the patient is stabilized for the most part, there are certain situations with cough CPR where, when the patient is guided by a medical expert telling them how and when to cough, it can help stabilize them further.

Remember though, cough CPR is only done guided by medical experts after the initial emergency and only in some situations. If you think you are having a heart attack, get 911 on the line and if you can, get the equivalent of some Advil. If there is anyone nearby, signal to them that you need help so they can assist you however they can. Do not just cough and try to get yourself through the emergency on your own.

3. Doctors Very Rarely Use The Defibrillator, And Never When A Patient Is Flatlining

This one may not cause a lot of harm, as most actual medical professionals know better than to think that what is on TV is real. However, some lay people are trained to be first aid, CPR, and AED (defibrillator) certified, and could potentially misuse this equipment. After all, first aid training is relatievely short and doesn’t have a lot of time to make an impression, but TV is constantly around us and it is difficult to escape the thrall of popular media and culture. And the issue here is that popular media has given us a completely incorrect idea of how defibrillator’s work.

Most people have this romantic notion in their head of a patient flatlining – all other hope is lost. There is only one, last, desperate option to bring the hero back to life. The doctor – or perhaps a random citizen who knows what they are doing – will grab some nearby defibrillator paddles, yell “CLEAR!” and then slam them down on the afflicted person’s chest like there is no tomorrow. After a few slams, a few more “CLEARS!” and often a couple shouts of “Don’t you die on me!” the person will gasp and the heart monitor will start pulsing in a nice steady rhythm again – the dead has been brought back to life.

Of course, anyone who knows how absurd this is, especially those who work in the medical field, are likely rolling their eyes to the back of their skulls every time they see a scene like this in a movie or television program. A defibrillator is actually used to shock a person’s heart rhythm back to where they are supposed to be when it is irregular, but it will do absolutely nothing for someone who is already flatlining and has no pulse – if a person is flatlining and the doctors believe they still have a chance they would continue to perform CPR and possibly use epinephrine; they would not shock them with the paddles.

2. Urban Legends About Organ Harvesting And Vaccinations Have Led To Killings Of Medical Volunteers

In some parts of the world, medical myths fly around even thicker and faster than they do in places like the United States or the UK. This is mainly because in many countries, they don’t have as much access to information, or as much education, so it is easier for paranoia and fear to take hold. In Pakistan a few years back, over a dozen Western medical volunteers were killed in about a year, and authorities believe it was because people were paranoid that they were actually trying to do harm under the guise of medicine. In Brazil, many people in the poorer slums will not go to the hospitals because they fear their organs will be stolen there, and fear of organ theft abounds in many third world countries.

Foreign medical volunteers will even become capable of speaking the local languages, and will act kind, but are often distrusted anyway. They will have tools the locals are not used to, and methods that they may not have seen before. Constant rumors make things worse and create further resistance and put the lives of those volunteering medical services at great risk. Unfortunately, trust in Western doctors was set back not long ago when it was discovered that the CIA had someone offering to give Hepatitis B vaccinations in Pakistan, in order to find DNA to locate and take out Bin Laden. While the vaccines were not harmful, they were also not proper medical treatment, and people are understandably now more leery of Western doctors coming to help them out.

1. The Rumor That Gum Stays In Your Digestive Tract For Years Has Caused A LOT Of Trash

To end on a lighter note, one of the most prolific urban legends you will ever hear is that if you swallow your chewing gum, it will stay in your digestive tract for seven years – and in some versions of the legend, even longer. For this reason, people tend to spit out their gum and just stick it anywhere – a wall, under a chair, under a table, the ground, the floor, a corner it will never come out of without industrial solvent, etc. This has led to a horrible mass of filthy, saliva encrusted, germ laden gum being stuck on surfaces all over the world, and providing a constant nightmare to cleaning people.

And it never needed to be this way in the first place. People can swallow their gum safely and without any real worry. While a small child could potentially choke on a larger piece, that is really just an argument for why a small child really shouldn’t be chewing gum in the first place. For anyone else, it doesn’t stay in your digestive tract, but actually just passes right through it when you excrete – this is what your body tends to do with anything it can’t properly digest. Now, if you ate a lot of gum over a short period of time you could get a little constipated, but that is really the worst you are going to go through. If you cannot find anywhere polite and proper to dispose of your gum, it won’t hurt you to swallow it once in a while and keep the world a little bit cleaner.