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Why have death rates from accidental falls tripled?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- florgashmorg 9mo agoeveryone be trippin'
- blakesterz 9mo agoI guess the hypothesis makes sense. They say it's probably Drugs, Alcohol, Obesity and Fourth, some of the increase may be due to changes in reporting. As people have become more aware of the danger of falls, falls that used to not be recorded as a cause of death may increasingly be reported as a cause.
- PurpleRamen 9mo agoI'm curious how many deadly falls are the result of an ilness. Would having an heart attack in an unlucky moment skew the statistics? I guess they normally would not research the cause of death deeper if there is an obvious reason.
- tempsaasexample 9mo agoA good friend recently lost her dad to a fall in his back yard. Technically it was a second or third stroke in the past few years, but this time he also fell backwards onto a cement stepping stone in his backyard. So you're correct that these things can often be related. Another friend has never had a fainting spell in his life. But three years ago, fainted luckily forward I guess, and knocked out a tooth.
- storus 9mo agoI'd add overwhelmingly increasing stupidity by enforced safety, preventing people from learning from their (small) mistakes, leading to big ones. Just recently I was talking to a friend about how everything agile is being exterminated in favor of safety, e.g. police chasing two lonely cars slowly drifting on a frozen public mountain road during the night with no other cars/people in sight due to "endangering public". How else should people learn how to handle critical situations than being exposed to them in a low-risk controlled manner?
- taeric 9mo agoLarge changes almost always represent a change in reporting, don't they?
- NedF 9mo ago[dead]
- pseudohadamard 9mo agoMan, I knew Trump was a big Putin fan but I didn't think the US would follow Russia that quickly. (This is satire, for the humor-impaired).
- bell-cot 9mo agoFrom sad experience with my own family - I'd also consider declining quality of treatment. Patients who fell may be neither cool nor lucrative for the medical-industrial complex. Also said complex protecting its own, by attributing some "oops, we goofed" deaths to falls.
- zkmon 9mo agoPeople fall because the surroundings are unfamiliar, their trust and assumptions about things around them, and about themselves, have gone wrong. Why does this discrepancy arise? For older people, the world around them and food they eat has changed too fast, to the extent of being an alien land. They walk on a surface, making assumptions based on what they were familiar with in the past. But the surface is no longer the same. They eat the changed food, assuming that it will keep them as strong as before. That turns out to be false as well. Most old people feel that they are living in a world that is completely unfamiliar and untrustworthy.
- Sharlin 9mo agoI think this can be seen here up north, where people fall through ice and drown every fall and (more commonly) spring. It's not a new thing – these people are almost always male, at least in their 50s, alone on the ice, and taking stupid unnecessary risks trying to reach their favorite ice fishing spot or whatever – but I can't help but think that increasingly these deaths are caused by assumptions that the ice is strong enough because it has "always been at this time of the year". Except that it isn't, not anymore. Or even if it is this year, the annual variance is much greater.
- PurpleRamen 9mo agoThe rise is independant of age, but with younger people even greater. Other than that, is that some ai-slop-comment?
- zkmon 9mo agoOfcourse, it applies to younger people as well. I didn't exclude them. Other than, if it sounds like "ai slop" to you, you probably did not expect a properly written statement from real people. It gotten to a point someone saying real world experience witnessed by me as "ai slop". This HN land became unfamiliar alien land to me now. Do I need to force myself to sound trivial, incorrect, slangish?
- PurpleRamen 9mo ago
- havblue 9mo agoAside from alcohol and obesity, I don't see: 1. Cancer survivability. If people aren't dying from cancer they will be more likely to die from a fall in a weakened state. 2. Two level homes are a higher percentage of new construction and people are more able to afford it when they're older. Edit: okay they did mention fewer deaths from other causes such as cancer and heart disease.
- rossdavidh 9mo agoFewer small (one-level) homes is an excellent point. Also a lot of old people used to live in trailer homes or mobile homes, which are also one-level.
- kjkjadksj 9mo agoThe stairs are probably your least likely place to fall. You have a railing. Getting out of the shower or slipping in the kitchen and catching the counter on the way down however…
- onlypassingthru 9mo agoThere is an unmet need for mandatory (stylish) shower bars. Age doesn't matter; everybody could benefit from a solid handhold in that critical in/out transition.
- rossdavidh 9mo agoI agree less likely, but I wonder if more likely to be fatal when they happen? Just a guess.
- havblue 9mo agoLike anything it depends. I'm terrified at the idea that my mother in law or my mom would slip on my stairs at home. We used to have carpeted basement stairs and I slipped on them several times. They're wood with silicone traction pads now and far safer.
- Finnucane 9mo ago
- irishcoffee 9mo agoThose two maps don't agree about Idaho.
- amelius 9mo agoE-bikes?
- technothrasher 9mo agoThe CDC separates pedal cyclist causes of death from fall causes, so they wouldn't be reflected in this data.
- patapong 9mo agoWould be interested to see a breakdown of what type of falls these are. Falls in bathrooms, outside or on ice?
- JohnMakin 9mo agoI can tell you from personal experience losing a lot of my mobility at a young-ish age, the bathroom is by far and away the most terrifying place for me, especially getting into and out of the shower. It was the first place I started installing safety mechanisms - wouldn't be surprised if bathroom falls are a significant percentage, and stairs.
- binary132 9mo agoVery old people are a larger proportion of the total population than before.
- fifticon 9mo agoIt is weird that the graphed increase grows steadily at presumably the same rate - there is no spike or bump or curve. I wonder if that indicates anything. Disregarding the shape of the graph, I would have guessed at a change in reporting instead. The steadily rising curve almost looks like something being gradually employed. At some point, the curve ought to change direction, if not before, then after the last person has fallen over.
- grugdev42 9mo agoIdiocy? Lots of new pastimes involve climbing up, diving off, or jumping between very tall things. Usually with some sort of recording/streaming device strapped to the hobbyist.
- grumpopotamus 9mo agoThe article says death rates from falls in younger people has declined.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- meindnoch 9mo agoThis might be evidence that the gravitational constant G is changing (increasing) over time! Could this be the explanation for dark matter and dark energy?
- rob74 9mo agoOccam's razor says it's less likely that the gravitational constant is increasing and more likely that the ability to withstand the pull of gravity decreases with age.
- dec0dedab0de 9mo agoWell of course old people fall more, but the article is about changes over the last 20 years. ...Oh wait, are you saying there are more old people now? That's interesting.
- jibal 9mo agoIt's back end of the post-war boom.
- toss1 9mo agoWhich was specifically addressed early in the article. Not only are there more falls among the elderly, there are more falls even fully accounting for changes in age composition of the population. >>But an aging population only partially explains the rise in these deaths. Deaths by falls have risen 2.4-fold on an age-adjusted basis. While they have fallen among younger people and only risen slightly among the middle aged, they have risen substantially within every age bracket of the elderly.
- rossdavidh 9mo agoArticle says age-adjusted fall rates are up substantially, so it's not just older population.
- fellowniusmonk 9mo ago
- xvector 9mo agoCould less physical labor lead to weaker bones or atrophied muscles leading to greater fall mortality? I did an Ozempic stint and noticed my bone density had decreased to the bottom 3 percentile for my age, and I lost muscle as well. It's all on me, of course, but I wonder if this phenomenon is widespread, and if it'll result in more deaths from falls.
- dec0dedab0de 9mo agoI would assume it is because of the extra distractions now. Everything becoming "smarter" and more addictive. How many were looking at their phones, hurrying back to catch the increasingly manipulative "news", or frustrated because their voice assistant didn't understand them? Since 2000 all of these things, and the amount of tech per household in general, have gone up quite a bit. I'm surprised it wasn't listed as a hypothesis worth looking at.
- netsharc 9mo agoThis is my first guess too. There's some stat that says more people die from falling while they try to frame a selfie compared to dying because of shark attacks... (Ok death by shark is actually quite rare)
- kube-system 9mo agoThe death rates increased 200% for 85+ year olds but deceased for people under 35.
- mothballed 9mo agoI wonder if it's about 1/3 as easy to find an under 35 year old handyman as it was in the year 2000. Since 2020 the price of maintaining anything in your house has exploded, coupled with dwindling value of fixed incomes, which has got to be getting a lot more old people up on ladders.
- dec0dedab0de 9mo agoI almost mentioned that too, but I thought I was going to expose myself for being bad at maintaining my house. Going down the same line of thought, how many people are attempting DIY repairs that they never would have before because of youtube and other resources? I know that I have done way more work on my home than my parents or grandparents ever did.
- m3047 9mo ago
- mhb 9mo agoI'll throw this out. Due to inflation and cheaper goods (Baumol effect) more people are engaged in activities which can lead to accidental falls - DIY projects like cleaning gutters.
- potato3732842 9mo agoOr due to economic circumstance people are DIYing things deeper into old age.
- Aboutplants 9mo agoNow graph this against the rise of mobile devices…
- bell-cot 9mo agoLooking at the article's graphs - both the deaths and the increase in deaths are very strongly skewed toward the highest age brackets. Deaths fell in the 34-and-under brackets. Are 85+ folks falling more (or worse), because they're paying more attention to their phones than to their feet? Or maybe the fatal falls are caused by collisions with nose-in-phone kids?
- Zak 9mo agoFall fatalities for people 25-34 are likely related to working at height or recreational climbing, during which the victim is less likely to be using electronic devices.
- alphazard 9mo agoIf you are sharing facts like "Wisconsin falls are more deadly than Alabama falls", then you need to address the more obvious hypotheses that are conjured in the readers head. I found no mention of "ice" or "slippery", and instead the article blazed forward with its preferred explanation without providing evidence to dismiss the more obvious hypotheses.
- rossdavidh 9mo agoPresumably because the Wisconsin-vs-Alabama differences have not significantly changed in the last few decades? Wisconsin has been a lot snowier than Alabama for a long time.
- duskwuff 9mo agoWhat's possibly more relevant is that Wisconsin has unusually high rates of alcohol abuse. Their high rate of fall-related deaths may be better understood as a high rate of alcohol-related deaths which involve falls. https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/wisconsins-death-grip-with-alcohol-is-killing-more-residents/ https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/wisconsins-death-grip-wit...
- shmeeed 9mo ago>Another state-level predictor of accidental fall death rates is wintry weather: eight of the 10 states with the highest age-adjusted rates are notably snowy. >Wisconsin, Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. The two states in the top 10 that are not notably snowy are Oklahoma and Oregon.
- 0_____0 9mo agoI have slipped on black ice in Portland OR.
- red-iron-pine 9mo agobruised my tailbone bad enough to see a doctor after a slip on black ice in VA
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- reimertz 9mo agomaybe because we now walk around with phones in our hands looking at screens. So when falling, we’re less prepared?
- mschuster91 9mo ago> Third, it may be due to increased rates of obesity. A CDC study found that obesity increased the propensity for someone to fall in a laboratory setting. And obesity rates among people 60 and older rose from about 32.8% in 2001-2002 to 38.5% in recent years. It's not just the chance of falling itself that warrants a look. More weight also means more energy dissipated. On top of that, the problems with falls start to get really serious once fractures get into play [1]. What I can't find any data on is a change of floor material compositions. Anecdotally, I remember many of my older relatives having really soft carpets in their homes, while in more modern homes and even care institutions you will find hard material - hard carpet, wood, tiles or in institutions, straight concrete. All of these have the advantage that you can keep them clean and hygienic with far less effort - but damn, even as a younger person it hurts much more tripping over my cat when in areas with hard flooring. And they're slippery when wet! For an older or obeser person, it sounds at least plausible that the flooring material contributes to more severe (and, consequentially, more fatal) fall events. [1] https://www.rechtsdepesche.de/hohe-sterblichkeit-nach-gefaehrlichen-stuerzen/ https://www.rechtsdepesche.de/hohe-sterblichkeit-nach-gefaeh...
- amelius 9mo agoPeople look on their smartphones too much. They don't even look where they are walking anymore.
- Someone 9mo agoI didn’t see this discussing whether falls have become more dangerous. How much of this is because the elderly fall more often and how much because, if they fall, they’re more likely to die? If the latter, it seems the elderly have gotten worse at falling, possibly because they fall less at young age, and aren’t as good in breaking their fall as before. And yes, it will be difficult to gather data on ”fell with little consequences”, but for the elderly, many falls will lead to doctor visits, so there likely is data on that.
- fallingfrog 9mo agoThe line between "falling" and "not falling" is extremely blurry for children- they will often do things like jump around, tuck and roll on the ground, hop like frogs and then scamper up the stairs on all fours and then flop down and roll around. Does that constitute a fall? Who knows. When i was young I remember reading on a form at a doctor's office "have you fallen in the last year?" And finding that an extremely humorous question. "Have you fallen in the last 5 minutes" would have been a more meaningful one but still very silly. Even now at my age (40's) this fall I was crowd surfing at a car seat headrest concert in a black dress, and when I got to the front I was dropped in front of the stage, and then I stood up laughing and walked off to find my friends. Was that a fall? I don't know. Its just not really a question that makes sense when youre physically fit or young. So yeah, i don't think that's it.
- dwaltrip 9mo agoI’m surprised they didn’t mention increased social isolation.
- lukeschlather 9mo agoThey actually note the opposite of that, which is that fewer elderly people are living alone.
- hbn 9mo ago> Second, some of the increased deaths may be due to rising alcohol consumption. According to data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the percentage of people aged 65 or older who consume alcohol each month increased by 16% between 2002 and 2019. From 2002–2003 to 2021–2023, the share of this group who reported binge drinking in the past 30 days rose from 7.3% to 11.4% I've been hearing nothing but the complete opposite, that people are drinking less than ever https://news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-alcohol-concerns-surge.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-al... > Americans' drinking habits are shifting amid the medical world’s reappraisal of alcohol’s health effects. After decades of relative steadiness in the proportion of U.S. adults who drink, Gallup has documented three consecutive years of decline in the U.S. drinking rate as research supporting the “no amount of alcohol is safe” message mounts. Compounding the challenge for companies that sell alcohol, drinkers now appear to be dialing back how much they drink, as well. How are they finding completely opposite trends?
- estearum 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
- dexwiz 9mo agoNotice the age range is 65 or older. There is a large cohort of Boomers/GenX/Millenial drinkers who are aging up. The overall downtrend is that younger people are not starting to drink. But those who contributed to the initial rise are getting older.
- techjamie 9mo agoI imagine that would be one positive effect of endless entertainment being ubiquitous- since people can zone out in front of a screen with any entertainment medium of their choosing, they are less likely to opt for alcohol. Though interestingly, drunk driving fatalities are rising despite lowering alcohol consumption[1], even discounting the pandemic contriting large jumps up. So of the people that do drink, they're more likely to drive after doing so? It seems like an interesting topic to study. [1] https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/ https://www.safehome.org/resources/dui-statistics/
- buildsjets 9mo agoOn January 1 1999 the USA switched from ICD-9 to ICD-10 for reporting mortality. (ICD-10 was not used for non-fatal clinical coding until 2015.) And as with all new things, morticians likely stuck with the more generic codes from ICD-9 and gradually started using some of the more specific iCD-10 codes over time. ICD-10 has 55,000 different codes compared to 17,000 codes available in ICD-9. Could the gradual adoption of a more granular coding system in 1999 explain the increase in reported deaths due to falling that starts in 2000?
- porridgeraisin 9mo agoGreat find!
- tempsaasexample 9mo agoIf I had to guess it would be people getting heavier, weaker, and more sedentary than the past.. making falls more likely. Also people seem to like hard flooring lately instead of carpet. Even backyards are getting more cemented by the decade.
- bjourne 9mo agoAlso talker. And impact force increases with the square of distance so the extra height matters.
- tempsaasexample 9mo agoAs a side note, I've gotten my dad into dirtbiking for the first time at 65. He has padded shorts, and padding pants, and a padded shirt. He then wears my track leathers, even though he's on dirt. He's fallen a few times and he agrees you feel like superman. He's started joking that if he makes it to 75, he's going to start wearing the padded shorts and shirt as regular daily wear.
- klipklop 9mo agoI have always thought once I get to a certain age I might just start wearing a helmet...everywhere when standing. It will look silly, but maybe it's not such a bad idea.
- tempsaasexample 9mo agoPadded shorts with hip protection arent really visible in clothes. Wearing a helmet would make you look pretty crazy hah. But helmets are also designed to deal with impacts stronger than just falling over. For falls, people might do ok with just padded hats that were designed for just falls.
- kazinator 9mo agoDistraction by phones? (E.g. falls while taking deliberately dangerous selfie.)