Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/31/death-rates-due-to-accidents-c.html
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I’m surprised that teenage boys appear to suffer less accidents than adult men of any subsequent age.
Death by accident.
Maybe due to resilience/flexibility? Because yeah, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to die up until I hit thirty.
Falling on immovable objects with my open eye, countless falls from high places (resulting in a few broken bones), hit by cars a few times. Sometimes I wonder if I’m a live version of Domino from Deadpool.
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I’m surprised that teenage boys appear to suffer less accidents than adult men of any subsequent age.
I’d be curious to see the same chart with incidents involving automobiles, guns and alcohol split out as factors.
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kids bounce and never report it, I fell out of many a tree as a kid with very little damage apart for the odd scrape.
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It looks like not being able to drive has a significant impact on this, the front chunk of the graph is probably purely based on being in child seats and passenger seats of cars during collisions. Once you can afford and need to get in the front seat regularly your risk plateaus until your eyesight and reactions start to fail.
It’s also curious that even at 80 men are more likely to injure themselves than women, I’d expect the lines to converge at the point where falling over getting out of bed is a serious cause of mortality. Even a little testosterone bravado goes a long way.
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There isn’t any indication that bravado played any part in the accidents. Inflexibility and lack of social support (if you live alone, then no one knows that you hit your head in the shower) are probably bigger factors.
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My guess is that it’s related to adults’ greater access to alcohol.
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I’m surprised that teenage boys appear to suffer less accidents than adult men of any subsequent age.
It’s because most teens can’t say, “Hold my beer - watch this!”
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Maybe because adult men have more access to dangerous employment, e.g. mining, fishing, farming, construction…which is really dangerous when nobody is around to hold your beer.
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I’m surprised that teenage boys appear to suffer less accidents than adult men of any subsequent age.
I think because deep down they know they are stupid kids, vs “I’m an adult, I know what I’m doing.”
That and they know at 15 their mom will kill them if they screw up too bad.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if the minimum standard for “accident” varies depending on whether you have concerned parents standing by or not.
Children presumably get totted up as “accident” if something happens that any nearby adult considers serious enough to get looked at; and which isn’t so minor as to be tossed out of the statistics by the doctor.
Adults have much greater discretion in not bringing lesser injuries in; but are presumably more likely to be forced to get the serious ones dealt with(and, even if they don’t, the coroner can record the cause of death as accident when you make your postumous visit).
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That mid-life crisis pivot is interesting. One of those lines changes direction, the other just increases a little, then they both ease off after a good run before settling into a local minimum of safety just before the danger spike. #datascience
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It’s worth noting that the increased death rates in old age will not correlate highly with an increase number of accidents, but an increased physical fragility so that accidents that wouldn’t have killed you 50 years ago now do. This is also the major contributor to higher older adult death and injury rates while driving (and being an older passenger, cyclist, and pedestrian). Although older adults do have a small increase in actual crashes, the crashes they do have are much more likely to kill them (I learnt this during my PhD research into older adults and driving. There is an algorithm for older drivers that controls for increased fragility. The injury and death rates drop significantly when this is applied to the data).
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That spike at the end of life seems odd…kind of like something is trying hard to weed out those of us past 70. My teen years were close to pathologically dangerous yet now my risk is on a steep incline. I suppose it says a lot about my ability to survive the same kind of impacts I once did.
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I wonder of the curve is different in places where alcohol is more or less readily available to teens (like England)
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I could see men being more likely to avoid using a walker or be determined to climb a ladder to change a lightbulb like they have been doing for the past 60 years and that leading to a higher accident rate.
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Not sure if this is the kind of thing being measured, but as you get older all kinds of little things start to hobble you… things that would NEVER have happened to 25 year old me.
FE, I was coaching a little league game, very tight, well played, and our kids won, 6-3. I jumped up in excitement and IMMEDIATELY felt a pop in the back of my leg. Just from an excited leap! I was off my feet for a day and half and, fortunately, am recovered, but it was just random.
So, if I can do that just by reacting in excitement, I’m sure that my reduced/limited mental/physical capabilities lead to all kinds of unintentional, undesired mayhem.
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Suffer less accidents, or die as a result?
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Me at 12, getting a dozen stitches in my scalp after leaping off a stairway and hitting my head on the landing above, one hour after my mom stating she would kill the first kid who jumped off the stairs again on her date night.
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