Accidental Death

To die by accident is to experience a form of mortality that is unexpected, unplanned for, and unintentional. The key component to establishing a death as an accident is the absence of intentionality in its occurrence, namely, that the decedent did not intentionally act to produce a deadly outcome and that the deceased did not want to lose his or her life. Accidental death is one of the leading causes of deaths in the United States and is consistently ranked among the foremost causes of death worldwide.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics, accidental mortality is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States, ranking behind heart disease, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular diseases, and chronic lower respiratory infections. Moreover, accidental death increasingly receives public safety and epidemiologic interventions directed at reducing its incidence. These efforts have resulted in public policies that require seat belts and airbags in automobiles, stiffer penalties for driving under the influence of alcohol, and the use of smoke detectors in public and private buildings. Because accidental death has consistently ranked in the top 10 leading causes of mortality over the past century, public health efforts at eliminating or reducing its occurrence have also led to the creation of some [Page 5]noteworthy federal agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1971, which aims to reduce work-related injuries and death; the Consumer Product Safety Commission since 1972, which strives to ensure the safety of consumer products; and the National Transportation Safety Board since 1967, which investigates transportation-related deaths and injuries and makes recommendations to improve the safety of the traveling public. In addition to these federal agencies, the lobbying efforts of social movements, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which, since 1980, has worked to reduce alcoholrelated motor vehicle injuries and fatalities, have played a major role in bringing alcohol-related injuries and deaths to the forefront of discussions on prevention efforts. Yet, despite the work of these organizations, accidental mortality has not risen to the same level of public awareness and concern as the other 15 leading causes of death in the United States, and this relates to the very conception of what an accident is.

In the collective consciousness, an accident is defined as something that occurs by chance or the result of fate—an event or an outcome that people have little, or no, control over. And the thanatological assumptions surrounding accidental deaths are entrenched in this line of thinking because nobody intentionally dies by mistake. That accidental deaths are seen as the result of fate, bad luck, unfortunate circumstance, or statistical probability may explain why public health efforts to educate and lower the risk of accidental mortality are not as entrenched in the collective conscience as are other campaigns intended to address the incidences of mortality from the other leading lifestyle-related causes. An accidental death, in the public's consciousness, is too often an unfortunate occurrence that was unforeseen and unanticipated, a mistake-related mortality.

Leading Types of Accidental Deaths

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between the years 2000 and 2004, some of the leading causes of unintentional deaths for all age groups included motor vehicle accidents (214,434 deaths), poisonings (84,663), falls (80,540), unspecified accidents (33,134), suffocation (25,069), fire/burn (16,376), and drowning (16,376). Moreover, the CDC statistics on the occurrence of accidental death show that the risk of succumbing to unintentional mortality changes with different stages in a person's life. The accidental death risk for a toddler will be significantly different from that of a teenager's. Indeed, the leading cause of accidental deaths for children under age 1, according to the CDC, is unintentional suffocation, but between 1 and 3 years of age, it shifts to motor vehicle accidents. For adults over the age of 50, falls are the most prevalent cause of unintentional mortality. Furthermore, there were 108,694 accidental deaths in 2004, a figure that was higher than the 93,592 deaths in the year 2000, a near 14#x0025; increase in the number of unintentional deaths for this 5-year period, making unintentional death the leading cause of mortality for the first 40 years of life. However, it is important to remember that the age-adjusted accidental death rate per 100,000 people has actually fallen significantly over the past 4 decades in the United States, with 63.1 recorded accidental deaths per 100,000 individuals for the year 1960, compared to 37.7 deaths per 100,000 people for the year 2004.

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