Our annual compilation of statistics on unintentional injuries, costs, trends and
other characteristics is presented in Injury Facts®.
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to this information.
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Answers
Costs of Unintentional Injuries
The NSC's Research & Statistical Services Department prepares an annual bulletin
to help you estimate the costs associated with unintentional injuries. It is intended
to be used by communities to estimate their costs. It contains estimates of the
per-case costs of fatal and nonfatal injuries in each of the four classes (Work,
Motor-Vehicle, Home, and Public) The bulletin is called
Estimating the Costs of Unintentional Injuries and is updated
each year, usually in August, with estimates for the previous calendar year.
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What happened to the NSC incidence rates?
The National Safety Council rates that were shown in past editions of Injury Facts®
(e.g., pages 62-64 of the 2000 edition) came from Council member companies who elected
to participate in an award program. During 2000, the rules and entry procedures
for the award program were changed. As a result, there is no mass solicitation of
data from past program participants and thus no mechanism to collect data from which
to compute incidence rates. Companies that have been using NSC rates for benchmarking
or other purposes will need to switch to the BLS rates or use heir own past performance.
For more information about the revised program, Council members may go to the Safety
Motivation and Recognition pages of the Members Only
area.
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Occupational Injury and Illness Incidence
Rates
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes average incidence rates for injuries
only. It also publishes average incidence rates for injuries and illnesses at the
4-digit SIC code level of detail for manufacturing and at the 3-digit SIC code level
in other industries. Quartile incidence rates by industry and size of establishment
for total recordable cases and lost workday cases are also published. All of these
rates and other data from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses and
the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries may be found at Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. This
information is also published in Injury Facts® at the 3-digit level.
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Benchmarking Injury and Illness Incidence
Rates
A procedure to benchmark against national average incidence rates is given in the
2002 edition of Injury Facts® on pages 58 and 59. Also see the question
on Occupational Injury and Illness Incidence Rates.
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Most Dangerous Industry
In terms of death rates by industries, the mining industry topped the death rates
in 2001 with 31.8 fatalities per 100,000 workers, beating agricultural with 21.3,
construction with 13.3, manufacturing with 3.3, transportation and public utilities
with 11.4, trade (includes retail and wholesale trade) with 1.7, services (includes
finance, insurance, and real estate) with 1.4, and government with 2.4. However,
between 1912 and 2001, unintentional work deaths per 100,000 population were reduced
90%. See page 48 in the 2002 edition of Injury Facts®
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Most Dangerous Job or Occupation
The Bureau of Labor Statistics evaluated the risk of fatal injury among occupations
the had at least 20 deaths and 50,000 employed workers. Based on just the total
number of deaths, truck drivers, farm occupations, construction laborers, supervisors
and proprietors in sales occupations, and nonconstruction laborers had the highest
fatality totals. Based on death rates, which take into account the number of workers
in each occupation group, fishers, timber cutters and loggers, airplane pilots and
navigators, extractive occupations (mining, well drilling, etc.), and construction
laborers were the most hazardous occupations. For a more complete list and ranking
of occupations, see page 59 of the 1998 edition of Accident Fact ®
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Off-the-Job Injuries
“Off-the-job” injuries are injuries that involve employed people when
they are not working. For example, a restaurant cook cuts his hand on a knife\ while
fixing dinner at home or a truck driver who slides off an icy road while driving
his car to work, hits a tree, and suffers a sprained wrist. These injuries occurred
off-the-job. If similar injuries had occurred while in the restaurant or driving
a truck, they would have been on-the-job injuries. If the cook and the truck driver
had been retired, then the injuries would have been neither on-the-job nor off-the-job
because the people were not employed. They would have been classified and nonwork
injuries. Off-the-job injuries are of concern to employers because NSC statistics
show that for each on-the-job death due to unintentional injuries there are about
eight off-the-job deaths of workers due to unintentional injuries. And for each
on-the-job injury involving lost time there are almost two off-the-job injuries.
There are almost twice as many days lost from work due to off-the-job injuries as
for on-the-job. Employers have to deal with the same disruptions to production and
work schedules whether the injury occurred at work or away from work. See page 52
of the 2002 edition of Injury Facts® for more statistics on off-the-job
injuries and comparisons to on-the job injuries.
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Preventable Traffic Accidents
According to the Council's Guide to Determine Motor
Vehicle Accident Preventability, the definition is: A preventable accident
is one in which the driver failed to do everything that reasonably could have been
done to avoid the accident. In other words, when a driver commits errors and/or
fails to react reasonably to the errors of others, the Council considers an accident
to be preventable. When a driver commits no errors and reacts reasonably to the
errors of others, the Council considers the accident to be nonpreventable. Decisions
on preventability should be made in accordance with the procedures outlined in the
Guide, which contains guidelines for preventability of specific types of accidents
and many case studies.
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NSC's Holiday Periods for Traffic Fatalities
The National Safety Council makes estimates of the number of traffic fatalities
that could occur over selected holiday periods in order to illustrate the risks
of holiday highway travel. The estimates are not meant to scare people into staying
off the roads, rather to make them informed of the risks so that they can be prepared.
The NSC Statistics Department has traditionally followed the rules in the table
below to establish holiday traffic fatality counting periods (see
Holiday Periods).
Holidays are observed as follows:
|
New Year's Day |
January 1 |
|
Memorial Day |
Last Monday in May |
|
Independence Day |
July 4 |
|
Labor Day |
First Monday in September |
|
Thanksgiving Day |
Fourth Thursday in November |
|
Christmas Day |
December 25 |
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Most Dangerous Mode of Transportation
Injury Facts® compares four modes of transportation: scheduled airlines,
railroad passenger trains (including Amtrak and commutation), buses, and passenger
automobiles (excluding vans and pickup trucks). In general, buses, trains, and airlines
have much lower death rates than automobiles when the risk is expressed as passenger
deaths per passenger mile of travel. (Automobile drivers are considered passengers
but operators and crew of planes, trains, and buses are not.) In 2000, the passenger
death rat in automobiles was 0.80 per 100 million passenger-miles. The rates for
buses, trains, and airlines were 0.05, 0.03, and 0.02, respectively.
See page 128 in the 2002 edition of Injury Facts®
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Odds of Dying
See What are the Odds of Dying? for the approximate
annual and lifetime odds of dying from various unintentional-injury events. The
one-year odds of dying ranged from about 1 in 6,000 in a transportation accident
to about 1 in 45,000,000 from a spider bite. Lifetime odds of dying from any unintentional
cause are about 1 in 36.
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Children Killed by Guns
How many children are killed by guns is a complicated question. The answer depends
on a number of factors, including age range, and whether homicide, suicide, and/or
unintentional-injuries are included in the figure. If the age range is 0-19 years,
and homicide, suicide, and unintentional injuries are included, then the total firearms-related
deaths for 1999 is 3,385 . This is equivalent to about 9 deaths per day, a figure
commonly used by journalists. The 3,385 firearms-related deaths for age group 0-19
breaks down to 214 unintentional, 1,078 suicides, 1,990 homicides, 83 for which
the intent could not be determined, and 20 due to legal intervention. Viewed by
age group, 73 of the total firearms-related deaths were of children under 5 years
old, 416 were children 5-14 years old, and 2,896 were 15-19 years old. See page
127 of the 2002 edition of Injury Facts ®.
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Seasonal Patterns of Unintentional Injury
Deaths
As shown on page 21 of Injury Facts® 2002 Edition, several unintentional-injury
events have seasonal patterns.Drowning deaths show a strong seasonal pattern
high in the summer, low in winter. Deaths from fires and flames show an equally
strong but opposite seasonal pattern low in summer, high in winter. Firearms
deaths rise slightly during the hunting season (fall). Motor-vehicle crash deaths
also have a pattern. (see page 98).
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Sports Injury Rates are not available
