Asteron Finds Gen Y at Highest Risk of Accidental Death

First, belying the notion that the city is a dangerous place in which to live, non-urban areas are more dangerous environments when considering rates of accidental fatalities.

Second, Generation Y, made up of people now between ages 18 and 30, have higher rates of fatal accidents than any other age group. Asteron calls Generation Y "the accident-prone generation," noting that the statistics contradict the popular belief that older people are more likely die accidentally.

In its analysis, Asteron divided accidents into five types: road and traffic, accidental drowning, falls, poisoning or choking, and natural disasters.

Generation Y have especially high rates of road and transport fatalities, with those causes accounting for 41% of the age group’s accidental deaths, almost twice the rate for the next highest age group, Generation X. Generation X, composed of people between 32 and 44, have a 23% rate of fatal road and transport accidents, while poisoning and choking account for 41% of that generation’s accidental deaths.

Poisoning and choking also have the highest fatality rate among those between 45 and 64, the Baby Boomers, at 26 percent, followed closely by road and transport accidents at 20 percent.

Retirees, defined as those over 65, were most likely by far to suffer a fatal fall, with 84% of the age group’s accidental deaths attributed to falls. Retirees had very low rates of road and transport deaths and poisoning or choking deaths, at 16% and 9% respectively, but they had the highest rate of dying in a natural disaster at 55%. Asteron defined "natural disaster" to include "other external forces," which, in turn, included accidents in and around the home.

Between 2001 and 2010, 104,000 Australians died accidentally. Natural disasters accounted for 45,954 of those fatalities, road and transport accidents for 34,662, falls for 11,100, poisoning or choking for 7,526 and drowning for 4,822.

Asteron points out that only 4% of Australian families carry sufficient insurance to protect them against the consequences of an unexpected death, a problem that it blames on "Australians’ ‘she’ll be right’ attitude."

“Australians are on average twice as much in debt as they are protected for it with adequate levels of cover - and that’s not counting serious illness or long term disability from work,” according to Jordon Hawke, Asteron Life’s Executive General Manager. He emphasised that the study’s results contradicted popular assumptions. "Surprisingly, it’s not our senior citizens who are at most risk of accidental death, but young people under 30, who are more able-bodied, but have the highest rate of fatality across the top-five accident categories," he said.