How to Live Forever…or Longer
Accidental death tolls are masked by the drama caused by catastrophic events and natural disasters. Large scale events and disasters kill quickly, resulting in very high death tolls at one period, while accidental falls kill a greater number over time. This means that we are more likely of sustaining a serious injury, or dying, from our everyday activities than from catastrophic events or natural disasters. While catastrophes can’t be avoided, the number of accidental deaths and injuries that occur can be minimized with proper precautions.
Accidents rank amongst the top of leading death causes. In a US statistic of accidental deaths or unintentional injuries , the death count was 120,859 for one year. Specifically, 26,009 falls, 33,687 traffic deaths, and 33,041 accidental poisonings. In the same set of statistics, the number of emergency room visits for unintentional injuries was a high 29.3 million. The number of deaths recorded can be compared to the death toll from catastrophes and disasters. One of the most well known catastrophes is 9/11. 9/11 was terrorist attack in 2001, and is a major event in U.S. history, that resulted in catastrophic 2,996 deaths. This shows a ratio of 40:1 deaths of accidental to terror attacks.
Catastrophes capture more of our attention than accidents because of their economic after-effects. These rare events result in not only high death counts, but also in massive destruction. Natural disasters are similar. In an overview of 1980-2008, a total of 601 natural disasters occurred, affecting 24,482,933 people, and causing damages up to $483,481,501 (x 1,000). The most common disaster is storms, which occured averagely 12.69 times a year, costing $125,000,000. Ironically, natural disasters only killed 12,030 with 1,833 being from storms, which compares nothing to accidental death. Let’s say all the catastrophes and disasters happened in one day. We would result in billions of worth of massive damage, and a large amount of deaths. If the same occurred for all the accidental deaths, we would see little property damage, but would lose 121,000 lives, almost 40x more than catastrophes and disasters. Now that’s catastrophic.
Sadly, the accidental death rate is creeping higher in the US. The death rate has gradually increased, and in 2007 was about 12%, with most deaths from falls among the elderly and drug overdoses. Adding to the death toll was also motorcycle accidents, where 35% of motorcyclists are 45 and older. In 2005, the death count for motorcycle accidents doubled compared to the number in 1995, numbering 4,232. Also increasing, is the rate of deaths from falls, where the rate of death from falls of those 65 and older rose 31% from 1999 to 2003. However, accidents are the top killer for people ages 1 to 44.
Safety at home can help prevent the most common injuries and deaths, third of which occur in the home. According to the Home Safety Council, falls are the number one cause of home injuries and death in the US, especially for those under 5 and over 70. Making the bathroom a no-slip zone, safety-proofing stairs, and leaving lights on (such as night-lights) can help minimize slipping chances. Placed as second in the leading causes of accidental deaths is poisoning, where 90% of poisonings occur at home. Simply watching children closely, following safety directions, and storing chemicals properly can help prevent most accidental poisonings. Other major causes of death include choking, sharp object misuse (such as kitchen knives), and fires. Not surprisingly, the best way to prevent accidents besides undertaking safety precautions, is to use common sense.
Works Cited
New Source:
“Accidents or Unintentional Injuries.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Health Statistics, 30 Dec 2013. Web. 29 Mar 2014.
New Source:
“9/11 Death Statistics.” Statistic Brain. N.p., 26 Sep 2013. Web. 29 Mar 2014.
New Source:
“US Disaster Statistics.” Disaster Survival Resources. StudioKiko. Web. 29 Mar 2014.
New Source:
Karriem-Norwood, Varnada. “Wound Care: Your Essential First Aid Care Guide.” WebMD. N.p., 20 Sep 2012. Web. 29 Mar 2014.
New Source:
NBCnews, . “Accidental Death Rate Creeping Higher in U.S. .” NBCnews. Associated Press, 7 Jul 2007. Web. 31 Mar 2014.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Feedback please! 😀
Thank you for the early post, Stephen. It will give me (and your classmates) a chance to examine some criteria well before the deadline.
Name of the Post.
The noun is Cause. The adjective is Causal, not Casual. A common mistake.
Title.
Thank you for remembering to write one. It’s a new requirement of your short arguments. Yours is witty and hilarious. (But it shouldn’t end in a period)
First Paragraph
P1/S1. Not quite. We might overlook accidents because we’re distracted by catastrophes, and that might mean accidental death tolls are overlooked. But NOT: overlooked by catastrophic events.
P1/S2&S3. Not quite. You mean big disasters kill faster, but everyday activities kill more people. So your comparison is between fewer deaths faster and more deaths slowly. When you start by saying disasters kill MANY deaths in an instant, you prejudice us to think the disasters will kill more.
P1/S4. Not quite. The accidental deaths THAT OCCUR cannot be minimized; they’ve occurred. The NUMBER that occur can be minimized. Also catastrophes don’t need TO BE HELPED; we want TO AVOID them.
You’re writing much more direct and concise, more purposeful sentences since we started working together last semester, Stephen. I admire your progress. The next step is to transition well from sentence to sentence, to give your paragraph a logical flow. For example, each of these three sentences makes a comparison between major disaster and little accident. The second sentence does it twice for a reason. And the theme of larger numbers and greater likelihood is always attached to the preventable accidents:
Second Paragraph.
P2/S1. Not quite. Simplify. You can’t really mean that “in a statistic, deaths was numbered.” Plus your construction makes you needlessly repeat “unintentional injury deaths.” All you want to say is “In the US, accidental deaths number 120,859.” But you’ve left out the crucial time factor. 121,000 PER DAY? PER YEAR?
P2/S2. Not quite. “being” isn’t a verb, so you don’t have a sentence here.
P2/S3. You neglect to mention that these visits are to an emergency room.
P2/S4. “leading deaths in the nation”? Which can be compared with what result?
P2/S5. You don’t need to say that we use statistics to see what the number is. You seem to be trying too hard to create a bit of language to attach your link to, Stephen. You could attach it to “death toll.” The sentence could be easily combined with S4 to create: “The death toll for the terror attacks of 9/11, a major event in US history, was a catastrophic 2,996.”
P2/S6. Please don’t say “we would need” 40 9/11s. It sounds ghoulish.
Third Paragraph.
P3/S1. I’ve tried to dissuade you in the past from “the kind of” and “the type of” and “one of the kinds of” constructions because they add so little but create grammar problems, Steven. Here you create this number disagreement error: “One [of the reasons] . . . are.” Maybe there are several reasons, but you don’t have to say that here. You could simply say: “Catastrophes capture our attention because of their economic after-effects.” I don’t know what it means, but it’s much cleaner.
P3/S2. You could reduce this sentence to a “guest appearance” in S1: “Catastrophes capture more of our attention than accidents because of their economic after-effects.”
P3/S3. Whenever possible, especially when describing dramatic events, use the strongest verb available: “These rare events don’t only kill in large numbers, they also destroy massively.
P3/S4,5,6 . . . You’re losing us by tossing in the death tolls for constant comparison when your paragraph purports to be evidence of the massive dollar costs and numbers of people “affected.” You could possibly manage to do both comparisons in one paragraph (death tolls are higher for small accidents than for big catastrophes) but (dollar costs and the numbers of those affected in single events are higher for catastrophes than for small accidents), but it would take very precise language.
Here’s an idea: Pretend that all the accidental deaths occurred on one day in a single location. Call it The Big Slip-and-Fall of 9/12. No buildings fall on 9/12, and there’s very little property damage, but 121,000 Americans died in a single catastrophe, making it ten times as big a catastrophe as all the actual natural disasters of the last 30 years COMBINED.
Then, when you suggest, in P4, that we could prevent a disaster of that size from happening, the solution will address a very big problem.
Fourth Paragraph:
May I combine the first three sentences for you, Stephen?
Becomes this:
“Tips . . . are making . . . and leaving”?
Your sentence:
means:
Your conclusion fails to deliver on the promise of eternal life. You seem to have forgotten what you promised us. Here’s my advice: find out at what ages people die from accidents. Find out also what percentage of us die from accidents. Then calculate how many years longer we all would live (on average) if none of us died in accidents. The numbers should be available. The arithmetic is simple. The results could be dramatic.
Okay, Revised. More feedback please!
Feedback provided. DSH
Hey Stephen.
P1. Nice paragraph. It communicates its strong idea well and straightforwardly. Its first sentence is still a little dense, so that its meaning is not immediately clear, but otherwise the balance between relative death tolls is easy to apprehend.
—likely to sustain
P2. When you say “rank amongst the top of leading death causes” do you mean “kill more of us than almost anything else”? People die in both sentences, but in the second version, the verb “kill” makes its point so much more clearly than the verb “rank.”
The same should be true in your last sentences too, Stephen. Your conclusion “This shows a ratio” doesn’t begin to make its point as well as: “The infamous 9/11 terror attack of 2001, clearly a major catastrophe in US history, resulted in 2,996 deaths, but in the same year, accidents killed 40 times as many Americans.”
P3. You’re making an odd distinction between catastrophes and natural disasters. Aren’t natural disasters also catastrophes?
—which compares nothing to accidental death? huh?
—We would result in billions? huh?
—a large [amount] number of deaths
Your math is fuzzy. You said accidents caused 40x as many deaths as 9/11 (2,996). Now you say accidents cause 40x as many deaths as natural disasters (12,030). Both can’t be right.
[You’ve raised the question yourself, so you’re responsible for what happens in your reader’s head: What about the collateral effects of 9/11? Surely some first responders must have been injured or died. Rescuers? What about the massive cleanup effort? Did it result in accidental deaths? And long-term, many crews are suing for damages from the toxicity they encountered cleaning up Ground Zero for years after: lots of lung trouble, cancers? They’re not accidents, but you got me thinking.]
P4. Does accounting for 12% mean an increase in the number of deaths? Or is it just a higher percentage of the total death? You say “the rate” is creeping higher. That might just mean we’re better at fighting disease. So the “sadly” might be illogical. If we end disease and prevent all accidents, will you be saying: “Sadly, natural causes account for almost all deaths”?
Numbers don’t “double.” They “are double.” Or one “is twice.”
What is the logic value of your “However”?
P5. —one third of which
(by the way one third of what? of injuries? of deaths? of accidents?)
You could also say, ironically, the best way to avoid accidents is to avoid your home: that place is obviously a death trap!
You haven’t done a comparison to really nail this down at the end of your essay, Stephen. What a great conclusion it would be to demonstrate with a number of some kind that you could improve your odds of living a long life by 50% by avoiding fatal accidents (many of which are obviously avoidable with a little care), while (since the odds of dying in a catastrophe are so much less), you only improve your odds by 2% by staying out of hurricanes and terror attacks. Do you have the math for that?
Grade recorded. Always improvable.