The age most prone to accidental death is 40: Oz study
By ANIThursday, January 6, 2011
SYDNEY - An Australian study has suggested that the age most prone to accidental death in humans is 40.
The findings in the survey, by a life insurer, were based on Australian Bureau of Statistics and other Commonwealth government data.
“Forty years old is the most dangerous year of all, and most people don’t even know it,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Suncorp Life chief Geoff Summerhayes as saying.
The silver lining, he added, was that those aged 40 to 50 were “typically better insured than most other age groups”.
To arrive at the figure, the insurer averaged the age of death across the five main causes of accidental death among Australians aged up to 74.
They spanned road deaths, poisoning, falls, drowning and choking, and counted workplace deaths in each category.
Victoria had a sizeable 22 percent of the 2277 accidental deaths recorded in 2008 by the ABS, but that was attributed to the size of the population.
The analysis concluded that on a per capita basis New South Wales was the least accident prone, with Western Australia the most. (ANI)
