Fact or fiction

Stay in, stay safe – that was the slogan during the darkest days of the pandemic. It was also my slogan before the pandemic. Sadly, turns out, as various housebound injuries attest, the sanctuary of an Englishman’s castle also, horribly, poses threats of all kinds. It’s a dangerous world out there…and in here. Anyway, here are some truths and some lies. Can you tell which are which?

So, let’s talk about Britain’s most accident-prone man, Mick Wilary. In 2010, the County Durham farmer was pinned against a wall by his own JCB, causing severe damage to a leg and his shoulder. According to Wilary, it was his 30th gruesome accident, a catalogue leaving him with 15 broken bones.

Events include both ankles snapped after tripping on a potato; smashed collar bone after a horse was spooked by a plastic bag; head split asunder after tripping on a cat; end of finger removed with Stanley Knife; stabbing himself in the stomach while cutting a stick; and ribs shattered when a trailer toppled over.

Despite this litany of excruciating mishaps, Wilary refuses to resign, often mumbling something about a “mandate from the people”.

Some think them a small component in the vital battle against climate change; others see them as a modern pestilence – either way, riders of e-scooters should probably start taking a bit more care: stats show that users of the things are three times as likely to do themselves a mischief as riders of old-fashioned bicycles.

Looks like another pin in the eye for green travel, then: the things are naturally outrageous, like people who want a sustainable future. Not quite: e-scooter calamity victims tend to be helmetless and, naturally, drunk.

Safety campaigners now want stricter steps taken to temper the scourge, as well they might.

What’s the most innocuous activity you can think of? How about getting something from the fridge? What could be safer? Think again.

Last year, over 132,000 Brits were hospitalised while interacting with their refrigerators. Common cases include poorly-stacked foodstuffs tumbling, badly-fitted doors coming loose, malfunctioning coolers exploding, mistakenly trapped pets leaping, unstable ice particles splintering, improperly installed shelves careening and even toohighly-set freezer compartments frostbite yielding.

Mark Jones, the government’s refrigeration czar, says “we should be careful” when dealing with fridges, and has set out a 284-point plan that he believes should lead to a “significant drop” in appalling instances, creating “happier kitchens and saving the NHS over £16 billion a year”.

Sometimes seemingly terrible accidents can lead to wholesome outcomes.

On Christmas Eve 1924, an enormous and popular elm was brought crashing down by an extremely heavy snowfall. The elderly tree crashed into the arboretum of Sir Titus Hawthorne, the Sussex-based entomologist who discovered the Mediterranean cat beetle.

Enraged and deeply saddened, Sir Titus began sifting through the wreckage of his specialist greenhouse as the thick snow swirled – and it was amongst the mangled debris that he fortuitously spotted the effect maple leaf has on cauliflower, when sufficiently cold and crumpled: and paracetamol was born.

We know that accidents are rife in the UK (Farmer Wilard, above, e-scooters, above, Brexit, etc) but which is the safest country in the world? That would be America. Only joking! It’s actually Switzerland, where there hasn’t been a recorded accident since March 2017!

After suffering a vast spate of misadventures during the late 1990s, the Swiss government began a campaign with cross-party support to eliminate undesirable outcomes from public life.

With a huge marketing campaign and unlimited funding, by 2012 the policy had seen incidents of broken bones drop to six a year, cuts down to four a year, and sprains dropping to zero.

This in a country with a population of over eight million! And that last official accident? A Zurich man lightly bruised his knee on a dog.

Facts: 1. Self-harmer farmer and 2. On yer bike