It is a truth universally acknowledged that the most awkward thing in the world is being in a car, or any close quarters, with a stranger, any person you don’t really know. In that silence, that emptiness of context, we can imagine every kind of worst-case scenario:  Kidnapping, cult initiations, forced stomach stapling.

But it isn’t strangers we should spend so much time worrying about.

It’s the people we know who we might need to be more careful of, particularly if they are male and drunk and you are a foreign-born female.  So the next time you are in the car with a stranger, please consult this list of threats you should actually be freaked out about.

Use it to make interesting conversation. It will certainly break the tension and get your mind off all those absurd scenarios we spend way too much time worrying about.

1. Unchecked Anger
We are decent beasts until anger blinds us.

2. Cars
We like to get sick with fear when we board airplanes or strap into roller coasters. But the real villains in our national tragedy are our precious automobiles. Over 40,000 people die a year on the road. That’s almost fifteen 9/11s every single year.

3. Male Family Members and Friends
(Especially if they are drunk and you are young foreign born)
It’s the strange man we fear—the footsteps in the dark—the unlocked back door. The correct part of the constant American crime fantasy is that it is usually a man hunting us. Approximately 90% of all murders are committed males. But stop worrying so much about strangers you don’t know and think about the strangers you know. Too often, we invite our predators in and offer them a drink. The leading cause of death for black women from 18-45 is domestic violence. The New York Health Department found that lovers committed 60% of all murders of women. Young foreign-born women were 87% more likely to be killed by a lover than a stranger. Females are much more likely to be victimized by someone they know. Strangers committed about 14% of all murders in 2002 while a family member or an acquaintance committed 43%. Family members commit two-thirds of murders of children under five. Two-thirds of violent crimes committed by acquaintances involved alcohol. Think about that at your next dinner party.

4. People of Your Own So-called Race
An extension of our narcissism is the belief that people who are like us are sane. But it’s the people who are most like us who are mostly likely to kill us. Blacks murdered more than 90% black murder victims. White criminals murdered more than 80% of white murder victims. I’m not saying strangers are safer than the people we know; I’m just saying they might be.

5. Your Appendix and Gallbladder
God or the creator packed us with more extra parts than IKEA ever would. Look out for these ticking time bombs inside your body. That stomach cramp may be the beginning of something very, very bad.

5. Fast Food
Heart disease is the leading cause of preventable death. We all know that each cigarette takes about thirteen minutes off of our lives. How about each French Fry? Each Biggie Shake?

6. Every Chemical/ Cigarettes
If you can’t stop breathing in all the crap in the air around you, please, at least, stop smoking.

7. Pro-Lifers
Good Christians are good for society, right? Well, large amounts of evidence show that the decrease in violent crime, which reached its lowest rate in 2005, can be directly attributed to the national legalization of Abortion in 1973. Pro-Lifers could also be called Pro-Enabling-the-Birth-of-Fatherless-Poor-Males-Who-Will-Likely-End-Up-Murdering-An-Aquiantance-Especially-If-They-Drink.

8. Detroit
This probably goes without saying, but there are some places where fearing a stranger makes sense. Detroit, for instance. “In Detroit, there were 41.79 murders per 100,000 people in 2002. This is alarmingly way above the national average rate of 5.6 for the same year.” (crime.org)