Airs – Ian Lance Taylor

Deaths in middle childhood

By far the leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 9 in the U.S. is automobile accidents, accounting for some 21% of all deaths (I’m looking at figures from 2002). After that comes cancer (18%) and congenital abnormality (7%). What surprises me is the fourth item on the list: drowning (5%). I’ve heard that swimming pools are dangerous, but I never fully grasped just how dangerous they are (I assume that most child drowning deaths are from swimming pools).

Mind you, while the percentage is surprisingly high, that is a percentage of deaths at an age where relatively few people die. The actual numbers are small: 159 drowning deaths of children aged 5 to 9 in 2002.

The other causes of death at 5% are burns and homicide, the latter being the more scary one. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 61% of homicides of children aged 6 to 11 are committed by family members. A “significant percentage” are negligent gun usage. Children can also be accidental victims of carjacking or robbery. Overall, 1 in 8 of these homicides are committed by strangers, or about 0.5% of all deaths of children in this age range, or something like 17 deaths in the year (remember this includes carjacking and robbery deaths).

So, if you’re the kind of person who wants to keep your children safe, it’s pretty obvious that you should teach them how to be safe around cars and teach them how to swim. There isn’t much you can do about cancer or congenital issues, and only limited steps you can take about fire. Everything else pales to insignificance. Obviously teach your kids to be careful around strangers, but don’t go overboard. They are at least 42 times more likely to be killed by a car.

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One response to “Deaths in middle childhood”

  1. etbe Avatar
    etbe

    Also don’t buy a vehicle that was designed for off-road use for the purpose of driving children to school. 4WD vehicles have limited visibility which contributes to the large portion of child road accidents which involve the driveway of the house where they live. Last I heard the average was that one young child in Australia was driven over in the driveway of their own home every week.

    Also vehicles with a high center of gravity (4WD) tend to roll easily, and vehicles that are a boxy shape (4WD) bounce when they roll which makes it worse.

    Finally no-one has ever made a child crash test dummy. Every crash test dummy that is supposed to be a child is based on a scaled down average American male. A casual glance at the body shape of a child or a skim read of the biology text books about bone growth reveals that there are significant differences between children and adults that affect what happens in a car crash.

    I presume that the American male cadavers used were almost all Caucasians and Afro-Americans although I haven’t been able to find a racial breakdown of the test subjects. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether the crash test dummies properly protect Asians.

    As for male vs female crash victims, again it’s anyone’s guess as to how representative they are. They should just do the research and find out for sure.

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