The Falls

We all need a basis for civic pride.

Here in Washington, we can always fall back on the steepness of our fines for not wearing a seat belt. At $86, it’s tops in the country, well ahead of Oregon ($75) and Rhode Island ($50).

This comes from some new figures at StateMaster.com, a Web site that compares states on a range of figures. Another seat-belt-related figure puts Washington at No. 2 for the highest percentage of fatal accidents in which restraints were used, at 55 percent. Which doesn’t mean, we don’t think, that seat belts are causing the accidents.

Here are some other ways in which we’re leading the nation:

We’re No. 1 for the most cremations (63.3 percent of deaths); exports to Russia ($260 million); and exports-per-capita to New Zealand ($53.28 for each of us).

We’re No. 3 in the total number of Starbucks franchises, having been overtaken by California and Texas. And we’re fourth in terms of exercise – when surveyed, 82.7 percent of us said that in the previous month, we’d exercised at least once.

But maybe not twice.