truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Three men were arrested in New Orleans in February and charged with possession of almost two pounds of marijuana after police were called to a car on fire, which they said started when the men stashed their dope under the hood, and it overheated.

Undignified Deaths: A 39-year-old man who had been cited 32 times for driving without a seat belt (and who finally rigged a fake belt in his car to create the illusion that he was belted in) was killed in a low-impact car crash that would not have been fatal to a belted driver (Okata, New Zealand; coroner's inquest, February). And a man and a woman were fatally struck by several vehicles on the Trans-Canada Highway after they had continued a fight from their stopped car out to the middle of the road (Chilliwack, British Columbia; February).

In a spectacular one-car wipe-out along an airstrip near Ocala, Fla., on Jan. 26, five young men were killed when their supercharged BMW M5 left the road at at least 120 mph, sailed 200 feet, and smashed into a tree. In the days after, visitors to an Internet forum of M5 drivers recalled a question posed on a message board on Jan. 25 from an 18-year-old seeking advice about handling the car when shifting gears at super-fast speeds. He signed on only as "Josh," which is the first name of the 18-year-old driver killed on the airstrip.

Undignified Deaths: In a spectacular one-car wipe-out along an airstrip near Ocala, Fla., on January 26th, five young men were killed when their supercharged BMW M5 left the road at at least 120 mph, sailed 200 feet, and smashed into a tree. In the days after, visitors to an Internet forum of M5 drivers recalled a question posed on a message board on January 25th from an 18-year-old seeking advice about handling the car when shifting gears at super-fast speeds. He signed on only as "Josh," which is the first name of the 18-year-old driver killed on the airstrip.

And a 36-year-old man attempted to hang himself in a closet in January, but his girlfriend discovered him in time and pulled him down, but that just angered the man, who then fought with the girlfriend. A passer-by stepped in to help the woman, and in the process applied a wrestling hold to the suicidal man's carotid artery, inadvertently killing him (San Diego, Calif.) (Irrelevant fact: The deceased's last name was Kevorkian.)

The Litigious Society: In August 2004, business executive Tomas Delgado, driving 100 mph in a 55mph zone, fatally smashed into a 17-year-old bicyclist near Haro, Spain. In 2006, Delgado sued the boy's family for the equivalent of about $29,000 for damage to his car, and the lawsuit languished until January 2008, when, perhaps shamed by worldwide publicity, Delgado dropped it.