[blakesterz]

I guess the hypothesis makes sense. They say it's probably Drugs, Alcohol, Obesity and Fourth, some of the increase may be due to changes in reporting. As people have become more aware of the danger of falls, falls that used to not be recorded as a cause of death may increasingly be reported as a cause.

[taeric]

Large changes almost always represent a change in reporting, don't they?

[PurpleRamen]

I'm curious how many deadly falls are the result of an ilness. Would having an heart attack in an unlucky moment skew the statistics? I guess they normally would not research the cause of death deeper if there is an obvious reason.

[tempsaasexample]

A good friend recently lost her dad to a fall in his back yard. Technically it was a second or third stroke in the past few years, but this time he also fell backwards onto a cement stepping stone in his backyard. So you're correct that these things can often be related. Another friend has never had a fainting spell in his life. But three years ago, fainted luckily forward I guess, and knocked out a tooth.

[pseudohadamard]

Man, I knew Trump was a big Putin fan but I didn't think the US would follow Russia that quickly.

(This is satire, for the humor-impaired).

[storus]

I'd add overwhelmingly increasing stupidity by enforced safety, preventing people from learning from their (small) mistakes, leading to big ones. Just recently I was talking to a friend about how everything agile is being exterminated in favor of safety, e.g. police chasing two lonely cars slowly drifting on a frozen public mountain road during the night with no other cars/people in sight due to "endangering public". How else should people learn how to handle critical situations than being exposed to them in a low-risk controlled manner?