I Wonder

I went to a friend’s house this evening and picked up a couple of tables to take to another friend tomorrow for a garage sale.  We loaded the tables in the back of the pickup, and as I was visiting with him in the drive, we heard tires screech, the thud of one vehicle hitting another, and more screeching.
I quickly got in the pickup and went down the block to the first intersection east of his house.  There, a smaller car was in the street, with someone getting out of it.  A van was in a yard, and someone was beside it.  They had collided in the intersection.
I identified myself as an EMT and asked if anyone was hurt.  I did a very preliminary assessment of each driver, asked if there were passengers, checked the windshields and steering assemblies of each vehicle (to determine if someone had hit her head on the glass or had possible chest trauma).  Everyone was OK.
A young man who witnessed the accident was also there, talking to 911.  As we waited for the police and started to calm down and assess damage, a woman who lived at the home where the van was in the yard came out.
The witness was no more than about 20 years old.  One driver was pushing it to be 18.  The other driver was about 35.  The woman at the home was 21 by her own admission.  Each of these people was a smoker.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was.
I thought health education made our younger people more resistant to cigarettes.  Maybe that is true in general, but these four younger people who were by chance brought together by this accident were exceptions to that rule.
It makes me wonder just how much good health education is really doing.