"Your chances of being involved in a fatal accident have not improved"

That's the headline on a piece of (insurance company) junk mail that came to Mrs. Verb (not her real name) this afternoon. They give a scary number or two about what's happened "since we last contacted you a few weeks ago." (Bastards ... where's the no-junk-mail list?).

What's the calculation I'm supposed to make here? It might motivate me to buy life insurance if the odds of my dying in an accident were increasing -- say, if I were to do the 'live in a glass cage filled with poisonous snakes for a month' routine. But I'm thinking they wouldn't cover me in that case.

Actually, the claim is surely wrong, statistically: I'm getting older and my odds of dying in an accident are decreasing: My odds of dying from heart attack or other non-accidental means are increasing steadily (if slowly, I hope), thus lowering the odds an accident will get me first, presumably.

Now that makes me feel better.