The US Bureau of Labour Statistics has its fascinatingly morbid fatality census report out! Are you a manager of some sort? Watch your back, because the study says if you die on the job, there’s a 10 per cent chance it’s murder.
That’s correct. Out of the 4547 workplace deaths in 2010, 10 per cent of them were a direct result of homicide. Gulp. We know it’s an American tradition to despise your bosses (except at Gizmodo! Hey guys!), but 10 per cent seems quite high! But maybe it’s better to get offed than to die as a boss from falling (9 per cent) or being “struck by an object” (12 per cent). What kind of places are these people managing? Insane asylums? Explosion factories?
Now, we’ll break down the rest of the ways you might soon die if you’re not management:
Overall, “Transportation and material moving occupations” — people who work operating vehicles — dominated the death list, with 1115 killed on the job. Only 7 per cent of them were murdered.
The 45-54 year old bracket made up the plurality of deaths, with a full quarter. 16 per cent of them plummeted to their demises.
The deadliest state to work in? Texas, with 456 fatalities. The safest? New Hampshire, with only five. West Virginia won the explosion death contest, with 34 — likely from all that coal mining, which is extremely dangerous and explosion-prone.
The most likely way to die? An old fashioned car accident — 968 on-the-job deaths. 45 workers died from “contact with temperature extremes”, which sounds particularly awful. 93 died from simply falling down on the ground. 224 died after being “caught in or compressed by equipment or objects”, which to me sounds like easily the most gruesome and terrible. Wait, scratch that — the fact that 258 people killed themselves at work is simply horrendous. Ugh.
There aren’t any figures for online tech writers, but I suspect the leading cause of death would be overly-bruised elbows sustained during MacBook charger manoeuvring, or over-excited touchpad click-induced insta-death from over-exposure to cat videos. [BLS via Consumerist]
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