Injury is a major cause of death in the United States. Unintentional injuries (accidents) are the 4th leading cause of death, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Add in the intentional injuries (suicides, homicides, executions, and combat deaths), and nearly 200,000 Americans died of injuries in 2013...
Deaths due to injury
Total injury deaths: 192,945
Unintentional: 130,557
Suicide: 41,149
Homicide: 16,121
Undetermined: 4,587
Legal intervention/war: 531
The government categorizes injury deaths by their cause: poisoning (48,545), firearms (33,636), motor vehicles (33,804), falling (31,240), suffocation (17,316), drowning (4,056), fire (3,220), cutting or stabbing (2,576), environmental (1,535), being struck (936), machinery (588), overexertion (13), and many thousands of injury deaths due to other causes.
The role of accidents—as opposed to suicide or homicide—varies by type of injury. Among poisonings, fully 80 percent of deaths are accidental. Among drownings, accidents account for an even larger 84 percent. For falls, the figure is 97 percent. But accidents are a tiny share of firearm deaths—just 505 people died due to the accidental discharge of a firearm in 2013. The 63 percent majority of firearm deaths are suicides and 33 percent are homicides.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Detailed Tables for Deaths: Final Data for 2013
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