Yesterday evening I was looking at photos from earlier in the day of Dhaka riot police attacking protesters. Later that evening I heard what sounded like gunshots or Malatov cocktails not far from our home, followed by screaming. I was almost as frightened as my dogs, though I soon calmed down and realized I was at no risk (today someone told me that it was just fireworks from a wedding). But even if it had been a gunfight in the street, what were the chances of my being hurt? The most dangerous thing I do every day is cross the main street to get to the office; almost every day in Dhaka, a pedestrian is killed by traffic. Yet while we fear violence and seek peaceful resolution to our political conflicts, little is done to address more genuine threats to our safety. Around the world a million people die each year from road crashes...where are the protests, the demands to seek a better way of transporting ourselves than by vehicles that make it so easy to kill others?