Geeking Out: Accidental Causes of Death in the U.S. -- By Age Group and Sex, by Major Category
RIP, Brian Doherty -- an untimely death due to an accident
Before I begin with the stats geeking out, I want to link to a recent obituary:
14 March 2026, Reason: Brian Doherty, Historian of the Libertarian Movement, Dead at 57
Brian Doherty, a longtime Reason senior editor and the leading historian of the libertarian movement, was found dead Friday morning after a fall the night before in Battery Yates park along the San Francisco Bay. He was 57.
Doherty, who began working at Reason in 1994, was the author of six books, most notably the definitive 2007 study, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg called Radicals an “extraordinary accomplishment“; libertarian economist Bryan Caplan dubbed it a “remarkable labor of love.”
Doherty’s other book-length treatments of libertarian phenomena included Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment (2008), Ron Paul’s rEVOLution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired (2012), and Modern Libertarianism: A Brief History of Classical Liberalism in the United States (2025).
“Brian was the historian of the libertarian movement,” says Reason Foundation President David Nott. “He lovingly and comprehensively portrayed the colorful characters in the libertarian world.”
I don’t need to know the details of Doherty’s death, but I do know that there are many ways to die from a fall:
Revisiting Death by Falls: Characteristics
Birthday festivities being over (kind of) yesterday, I decided to take a walk around Bushnell Park in Hartford.
Given his age and the location, he almost definitely did not die in the way that the very old die from falls: ICD-10 Code W18: Other fall on same level.
There is also W10, which is falling on stairs/steps, which skews younger, and the method by which Ivana Trump died.
Accidental deaths strike at all ages, but differ by type
But it just so happened I was working on this post already: looking at accidental causes of death in general, which happen at all ages, and extend far beyond falls.
Except during the pandemic, “accidents” have been the #3 cause of death behind heart disease and cancer for quite some time. But the problem is that I know there have been a variety of things in that “accidents” category:
motor vehicle accidents
drug overdoses
falls
drowning
fire
lightning strikes (okay, those are very few….recently)
And there’s much more.
In a post last year, I showed a breakdown of how accidental causes of death differed by age group:
The data were from 2023, and while it’s not surprising that falls were more prominent for the elderly compared to the young:
Given that both death rates due to falls and drug overdoses have been increasing since 1999… perhaps this profile has changed over time?
As well, the sex gap in accidental causes of death is of interest: more males figure in both drug overdose and motor vehicle accident deaths, but not necessarily falls.
Let’s check it out!
For this post, I’m looking at only 1999 and 2024 in statistics. I may look at interim years in future posts,
1999 Accidental Deaths by Sex and Age, U.S.
Count of deaths by sex and age
To make the graphs more directly comparable, I gave them identical vertical scales (within the same year and same metric).
Starting with 1999 as our base year, we’re going to see a pattern of much higher death counts for males in young adulthood compared to females, with both drug overdoses and motor vehicle accident deaths being much higher in count.
You’ll see that accidental deaths for seniors are higher in count for females than males. I’ll comment on that in a moment.
Percentage breakdown of accident type by age group
I’m not doing a detailed comparison of the percentage composition here — there are some differences. While there are far fewer accidental deaths for females in young adulthood, for instance, the percentage that are from motor vehicle accidents versus drug overdoses isn’t that different from that of males.
Rates by age and sex
While there were more accidental deaths for females than males in counts for the age 85+ age group, the rate for males is higher… because there are far fewer males around in that age group (in 1999… and now).
You can also see that even though the number of accidental deaths for males is highest in young adulthood, it is really at the oldest ages that accidental death is highest… driven by falls (and, potentially, other causes in the “all other accidents”, but I’m not digging into this right now).
Let’s jump over the next 25 years and see how the profile differs in 2024.
2024 Accidental Deaths by Sex and Age, U.S.
Count of deaths by sex and age
The first thing you’ll notice is the change in vertical scale.
This doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about rate, given the population of the U.S. is larger.
However, you can also eyeball it and see that drug overdoses are a higher percentage of the deaths in young adulthood:
Percentage breakdown of accident type by age group
Yikes.
Yes, drug overdoses are a much higher percentage of the accidental deaths in young adulthood and through middle age.
As well, falls are a much higher percentage of deaths in old age.
This is not because the rates of these causes dropped.
Rates by age and sex
The drug overdose death rates are much higher than before, for young and middle-aged adults, both males and females. But you can see the death rates due to falls for seniors are much higher, and much higher than what was seen in 1999.
Accidental deaths have been increasing in age-adjusted death rates, and it has been driven more by the increase in drug overdose death rates at younger ages, because age-adjusted death rates are affected more by the increase in death rates at younger ages.
Recently, there has been a decrease in drug overdose death rates — but only on a year-over-year basis. That is, in 2024, drug overdose deaths were lower in count and rate compared to 2023.
But it’s still a lot higher than what we saw in 1999.
Spreadsheet
The spreadsheet contains data for all years 1999-2024 on accidental deaths, just FYI. The graphs for 1999 and 2024 are in there, but the data exist for all the years in between.
