Major Dangers, Hidden in Plain Sight

For the first time in America, dying of an opioid overdose is more likely than dying in a vehicle crash, according to a National Safety Council report.

Surging overdose deaths are part of an unsettling upward trend in preventable, unintentional injury in the past 15 years, the nonprofit said.

Pedestrian and falling deaths are on the rise, and half of people who died in vehicle crashes weren’t wearing seatbelts, the report found.

The takeaway: Pay more attention to common dangers. “We typically focus on the unusual or scary events ... and assume that those are the riskiest”—but the opposite is true, cautions Ken Kolosh of the National Safety Council.

NPR