8 surprisingly common causes of death that sound like freak accidents

A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia September 30, 2014.  REUTERS/Tami Chappell
A general view of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta Thomson Reuters

The Centers for Disease Control keeps exhaustive records detailing how Americans die. It's morbid and fascinating.

Advertisement

The top killers aren't surprising — cancer, heart disease, and other familiar causes of death are all up there.

But scroll further down, and some strange things start to appear, including several sub-categories devoted to deaths related to three wheeled motorcycles. The list tells us a great deal about the ways we describe and categorize death, sometimes with hyper-specificity and other times with puzzling vagueness. 

We put together a list of some of the most unusual causes of death (complete with their codes used in the database and their toll between 1999 and 2014) that are still surprisingly common. While extremely rare, these are not the one-time occurrences you might expect — they've claimed thousands of lives. Most bring up more questions that answers.

Advertisement

W28: "Contact with powered lawnmower" — 951 deaths

lawn mower yard grass cutting grass
Flickr/Don Hobson

W02: "Fall involving ice-skates, skis, roller-skates or skateboards" — 1,139 deaths

ice skating
A woman skates on ice at Wollman Rink at Central Park in New York January 22, 2014. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Advertisement

W14: "Fall from tree" — 1,413 deaths

coconut tree climber
REUTERS/Zainal Abd Halim

W14: "Caught, crushed, jammed or pinched in or between objects" — 1,842 deaths

jean-claude van damme volvo truck stunt split
Volvo Trucks / YouTube
Advertisement

K59.0: "Constipation" — 2,167 deaths

toilet
dirtyboxface/Flickr

W30: "Contact with agricultural machinery" — 4,183 deaths

Tractor
David Wright/Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)
Advertisement

W75: "Accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed" — 10,206 deaths

sheets bedding sleeping bed
stillframe/Flickr

W06: "Fall involving bed" — 10,386 deaths

Bed
Vispring

That's almost 2,000 more deaths than those from a "fall from, out of or through building or structure."

CDC Death
Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.