Fatal Accidents as a Global Health Crisis

I am commenting again mainly to raise some questions.

1. The death rate in France from falling is astounding, almost as many as we have dying from transport. Something is wrong. Old houses with poor stairs? Failure to clear ice and snow? Cobblestone sidewalks?

2. Russia needs smoke detectors.

3. Could the higher death rate in India be one result of the habit of ritual washing in the holy Ganges river? Traveling about in small boats?

4. Do the statistics on poisoning include alcohol poisoning? I have been told by immigrants to the U.S. that other nations do a far better job of educating and warning young people about the dangers of alcohol. Also, perhaps the habit of giving children small sips of wine growing up in other countries helps them to develop resistance. Many people die here on their first exposure to alcohol and "doing shots", drinking whiskey straight down is celebrated in American movies featuring young people out "having a good time".

5. Any stats on accidental deaths should include medical errors, even though they are difficult to track. I have read that several hundred thousand people die every year in the U.S. from mistakes and hospital centric diseases.

http://terryreport.com

Russia is significantly worse on transport deaths than the U.S., but I would have expected Russia to be two times worse. Is it possible that some of the data is misreported? Under reported?

Judging from the crashes shown on youtube, something is really wrong in Russia. It is not just that they have lots of crashes, it is the really dumb, stupid crashes that are shown happening again and again, as if the entire driving population has a death wish. Cars will suddenly make a left turn from the curb or a far right position. People are shown driving way too fast and then slamming into a row of stopped cars. It is utter mayhem.

We could do far better in the U.S. As cars have gotten safer in crashes, people are driving faster with less concern for others. The consensus speed in the Interstates in most areas is now above 80 mph and enforcement has gone way down. There are just too many cars speeding for police to have much impact stopping one out of 5,000 cars. Speed, however, is not the main problem.

I see texting and driving all the time and I know we are all in danger from it. I don't understand why people think they can drive and do it, but they do.

It is also clear that some states skew out national stats because they have higher death rates. Which ones?

With small dash cams and internal computers keeping track of driving, we are about to enter a golden age of reduction in highway deaths, if we study the information and apply the lessons.

http://terryreport.com

Um, and gun-related injuries :)

Interesting how there's no category for guns deaths.

Perhaps because the gun lobby has made sure that data is not tracked in the USA.

Why are accidental deaths from firearms not included in this analysis?

The reason so many Indians drown is because there is not a single body of water in the entire country of 1.2 billion people that is safe for swimming. The environment so heavily polluted that no Indian would dare enter the water.

They know exactly in which direction the sewage flows.

How do they assign or apportion the accident categories in ferry, train, or plane? Transport, drowning, or poison if the driver/pilot is drunk or on drug.

India Shining ! Under Modi? (its not his fault, these stats are from before his election). Manmohan, Sonia, Congress and all Governments of India are taking pride in their effort (or lack of) that has India pegged as the leader in five of the six graphs, with second prize only in poisoning.
World take note.

"Americans are twice as likely to die from poisonings, again adjusted for age differences. Why?"

Maybe its our pervasive pro-stupidity movement?

How can this article not even mention what the graph shows - that transport deaths, the largest category by far, is 3x larger in the US than in the UK?

Two paragraphs on poisoning, a single-digit-per-million cause of death that's the same across developed countries, but nothing on America tripling Britain's per-capita vehicle deaths?

'If Russia could emulate Brazil, it would cut age-standardized deaths per capita from fire by 80 percent.' ~ Jeremy N Smith

Sure, and the best way to emulate Brazil, of course, is to tow the world's largest country into the Tropics.

The reason why Russia has so many fires very year that cause damage, injury and death is likely because Russia is so cold for so much of the year - so open fires, coal braziers, oil burners and boilers, and cheap electric heaters are constantly on the go for long periods. (Moreover, vodka, alcoholic stupor and cigarettes don't go well with cheap, inflammable foams used in upholstery).

I'm astounded that the author doesn't make it clear that "poisoning" includes drug overdoses -- in particular, those from prescription painkillers. (I discovered that fact by searching elsewhere.) According to CDC the prescription painkiller death toll is 46 per day, almost 17,000/year. The author says the reason why is a "mystery," but CDC and other reports have made the reason clear: over-prescription of these addictive drugs by U.S. healthcare providers. This is a pretty glaring omission in a story that is positioned as serious news analysis by the paper.

Gunshot, gunshot, gunshot.

This just beggars belief. How is it possible for a NYT article to be written about accidental death and miss out the greatest accidental killer in the land?

It is really really simple: if you own a hand gun the most likely person to die from it is yourself or a family member either by accident or suicide.

Not some 'bad guy'. Not some G-man stealing your Rights. You or your wife, or your son or your daughter.

Only by publicizing these facts can we make America a safer country.

Natural thinning of the herd, which is over-populating the earth as is. A cost-benefit analysis might proof it a good thing.

Horrific Deaths
Bob Simon of 60 MINUTES fame suffered a horrific death. The fact that our society accepts the reality of frequent and devastating car crashes without much question is a reflection of just how desensitized and fatalistic we’ve become. The numbers alone are staggering, yet we ignore these as statistics. Unless we or someone we love happens to be one of those thousands of people involved in a car crash, we blithely go through our daily routines, driving from place to place without a thought toward what a gamble it is that we take with our lives each time we put the key in the ignition. We don’t think about the truly tragic nature of car crashes, usually calling them “accidents” instead. An “accident” is taken to mean an unpreventable tragedy, one where culpability is difficult if not impossible to discern or attribute. We don’t ignore the grim reality of what happens when tragedy strikes other modes of transportation: planes crash, trains de-rail, and boats sink. But we insist that motor vehicles are involved in “accidents.” Misnaming the event minimizes the true nature of what we’re dealing with. Words are powerful, and if the word “accident” continues to convey the sense that we are powerless to do anything to stem the tide of increasing death and destruction on our roadways, then we remain passively resigned to the fact that there is nothing we can do about it.

Thanks for this article:

You wrote: "The World Bank has made reducing transport deaths a major investment priority, and Michael Bloomberg is the leading philanthropist for global injury prevention efforts, as Bill Gates is for children’s vaccines. But no one tracks overall aid money to accident prevention, even though unintentional injuries cause 6.36 percent of global deaths."

We need more investment in auto safety right here in the U.S.A. Under President Obama's expected 8 years in office America is on track to count 250,000 crash deaths, 1 million serious crash injuries, and $7 Trillion in societal losses.

But the U.S. Federal government is DUI - driving under the influence of the auto industry, See http://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog-state15goal.php

The world presently has over 7 billion people and the head count in constantly increasing - we need less people, not more. When are we going to stop this neverending focus on saving lives?

When will the left realize accidents can't be legislated away? It is called life.

again, more quality reporting by the NYT. while stories of terrorism are on the front page, accidents are the major killer. many worry about bombs, but do we also worry about making it to work and to home safely each day?

as the article notes, alcohol is a factor in many traffic accidents, but it can also be a factor in falls and even drowning. alcohol makes us do stupid things, and prevents us from doing responsible, preventative things. in addition, over-consumption of alcohol is its own poison.
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"...Americans are twice as likely to die from poisonings [as British], again adjusted for age differences. Why?"

what kind of poison? cleaning solvents, prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs, unintentional mixing of drugs (ex., alcohol and sleeping pills?),...

postscript: countries with extensive public or mass transportation typically have lower transportation fatalities. (see for example, japan and the UK.) countries that rely more on cars whose drivers vary in experience and on roads that vary in quality and driving conditions typically have higher transportation fatalities. poor countries typically have poor quality and dangerous vehicles. and of course, the willingness to obey traffic laws, including speed limits, can vary widely.

Why is there no mention in the article of gun deaths? It is possible to separate accidental death from gun violence and suicide. Are they just considered to be in insignificant numbers? The causes are easy to identify. I bet Britain has far fewer gun deaths than the U.S.

Many of these countries are quite overpopulated. The governments of places like India and China put most of their effort into preventing additional people from being born. Since they have more people than can be usefully employed, they are not too worried about the population losses from accidents, so they're not going to make accident prevention a priority.

Russia is a different case, their population is small and shrinking. If they're not careful, they will leave a largely empty country for someone else to occupy. Before the oil crisis and the invasion of the Ukraine, the Putin regime was trying to cut drinking and irresponsible behavior to prevent the loss of useful men in the prime of life.

Fatal accidents in perspective, many of them preventable, no doubt. May I suggest to include fatal firearms' accidents to the total? If only we could tally its tragic results, perhaps common sense measures may come into being.

Although I found the article interesting, in my opinion it's hard to compare such things as accidents. take transport injuries for instance. Not only the quality and safe of the roads are different among countries, but also the way law is enforced. In addition to that, those countries have a cultural background completely different. Considering that Culture is the way we view, experience, and engage with all aspects of our lives and the world around us, we can see that comparing those numbers among country is a herculean task.

The most likely cause of the differences between developed countries is medical accounting -- mentioned but brushed over in this article. recording cause of death differs from city to city, state to state, country to country -- with differing amounts of care given to correctly determining specifics in different areas and, unfortunately, the economic class, age and race of the deceased. There are only so many coroners and medical examiners and they have only so much time.

In China. India and Russia, how much care is put in to determining the difference between a drowning and a suicide? Are suicides quietly covered up by labeling them accidental drownings? The same applies to poisonings and in some cases, falls (Did he fall or did he jump?)

The recording of transportation injuries may also be affected. Is the death attributed to "massive trauma" when a patient dies a week after a nasty car crash?

As in all types of science, it is important that when comparing numbers about things that the counting is done exactly the same for all the items and places. Even seemingly minor differences in the counting can have huge results in the eventual interpretation of the numbers.

Readers, beware, of "fruit salad" epidemiology -- in which bits of apples, and oranges, and bananas are all counted as equal.

So many odd quirks, where to begin. I guess with simple questions.

Does "poisoning" include drug overdoses?

Is alcohol looked at as a contributing factor?

Is it the reporting that needs improving? France is almost 3 times as high for falls as Spain. The rate of stair railings and bannisters in use? Are the curbs generally higher in France? Intoxicating wines? Harsher winters? (Spain would be expected to have higher deaths from getting run over by bulls, is that included in falls?)

Drowning is curious. China would have lowered the rates as more of its population becomes urbanized. Education seems to have made a difference, also. Large amounts of people in India still have no running water, so they draw water from near-by lakes and streams, which would lead to more drowning, but what's up with Russia? Vodka at bath time, maybe?

Interesting snapshot, and a good start for comparison sake. But too much data is still "unknown".

Did the researchers keep in consideration that the minimum driving age in Europe is in most countries 18+ and that it comes, especially in Northern Europe with many mandatory lessons ? Where the drinking age in EU is usually lower than the driving age. Wondering if that has any influence on car related deaths as the news here is full of 16 year old, drunk kids killing themselves.

Fascinating article thanks. Perhaps as data availability grows and analytical tools improve the ratio of fact to emotion in public policy discussions can also improve.

Contributing factors in fatal transport fatal accidents correlates with diabetes due to severe hypoglycemia. In 2011, 25,000 car accidents were related to a driver having a severe hypoglycemia episode, and 215 of those accidents resulted in death.

This is a very big problem in Latin America. In Argentina there are eight (8) times the rate of fatal transit accidents as in the USA and there are less cars and less miles driven per capita. Much of this is due to lax traffic enforcement, more tolerance of drunk driving and aggressive drivers. The drivers there commonly don't obey traffic signals. Many pass on roads where passing is dangerous. They fly through lights turning red without looking to see if there is a pedestrian crossing. My wife was injured by just such a driver. Also there are bicyclists on streets at night with no lights or reflectors on the bikes. I have seen motorcyclists steering their vehicles with a child on their lap and a dog in a bag. Unfortunately in Argentina the disorder that characterizes the roadways results in thousands of unnecessary deaths every year.

Fascinating article. In Brazil, progress has both decreased accidental deaths -- as in fires caused by poor building structures and faulty inspections-- and led to an increase in them; as millions rise to the middle class and become drivers, they also become disadvantaged drivers, without the benefit of an "inherited" familiarity with automobiles, traffic rules and safety precautions, as well as old, poorly maintained vehicles, etc. Not to mention the "motoboy" phenomenon...as purchasing power increases, goods need to be moved fast amidst the chaotic traffic of big cities like Sao Paulo...thus the omnipresent kamikaze young men who make that happen.

My initial reaction to the poisoning stats for the US was to wonder how many are accidental and how many may have actually been suicides, for which there is different prevention strategy.

I have no problem with increasing efforts on reducing preventable accidents. However, much accident prevention require some government regulation because neither business or individuals rarely take action on their own and will fight any safety regulation. Consider the arguments over seat belts, padded dashes, airbags, safety glass and any number of items just in vehicles alone. In almost every case, the auto industry played chicken little and cars were going to cost tens of thousands dollars more to implement. Add to that the politicians. Think of all the states that are rolled back mandatory helmet laws for motorcycles. After the triangle shirtwaist fire, there was any amount of pushback by business. We know how much business and individuals like more regulations. I grant that some (and sometimes too much) regulation are merely protecting people from their own foolishness but finding that dividing line is the real issue for injury prevention.