The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention carried out a study to look at unintentional deaths in the United States. They found that there were 130,557 such deaths, meaning that 41.3 people for every 100,000 people in the United States died unintentionally. This classification was able to sort these deaths from causes like murder or suicide.
First, the CDC report noted unintentional traffic deaths. There were 33,804 of these fatal accidents, showing that 10.7 people out of every 100,000 people died in car accidents.
Next came unintentional fall deaths. There were 30,208 deaths, or 9.6 for everyone 100,000 people. They ranked very close to car accidents, though they were not quite as common for the year studied — which was 2013.
What may be rather shocking to people is that car accidents were not number one on the list. The actual leader in this study was unintentional poisoning deaths. A full 12.3 out of every 100,000 people died this way, for a total of 38,851.
Of course, the fact that something else outranked traffic deaths does not lower the seriousness of this situation, as auto accident deaths are still very common and those who have lost loved ones need to know what rights they have. They may be able to seek compensation for medical bills, lost wages and more.
Plus, poisoning deaths do not outrank auto deaths in every study or every year. Another article from the CDC notes that there were more traffic deaths in 2004 than unintentional poisoning deaths, so both of these can be seen as leading mortality causes in California.
Source: CDC, “Accidents or Unintentional Injuries,” accessed July 21, 2016