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Chart: Causes of Accidental Deaths: Reported Annual Data Data: National Center for Health Statistics [ beadsland on Ko-fi ] Dashed lines for annual data for years 2015 through 2020. Chart is blank 2021 to 2022. Legend: • Accidental poisoning and exposure to noxious substances (up 32.9% btw. 2019 & 2020) [~87K total in 2020] • Motor vehicle accidents (up 8.4%) [42K] • Falls (up 6.8%) [42K] • Accidental hanging, strangulation, and suffocation (down -4.1%) [7K] • Accidental drowning and submersion (up 13.1%) [4K] • Accidental exposure to smoke, fire, and flames (up 9.6%) [3K] • Accidental discharge of firearms (up 10.1%) [½K] • All other unintentional injuries (down -1.2%) [15K] [A table below the legend ranks these items by rate of change.] Captions: Historically, U.S. health authorities have published “Final Data”—detailed tables and demographic analysis of causes of mortality—about eighteen months, give or take, from the close of each calendar year. It took nearly thirty-three months to release final data for 2020. Data for 2021 remains significantly overdue. ---- Despite popular conjecture, the observed sharp increase in accidental deaths between 2019 and 2020 was not due to motor vehicle accidents. Rather, accidental poisonings—up by a third over the prior year—account for nearly all the increase in elevated deaths by accidental causes.