New Study Gives State-by-State View of How We Get Injured

Is your body in perfect working order at this moment? Chances are, it is not. British researchers released a report in 2012 finding that the average person suffers 124 ailments each year, which means they suffer nearly 10,000 such ailments over their lifetime (9,672 to be exact). The criteria for ailment in that study was, as you might imagine, broad, including scrapes, headaches, soreness, stubbed toes, and those pesky cuts from shaving. But what about more serious injuries? The kind where you face high medical bills and may need to bring a lawsuit to recover your costs and damages? Those numbers are a little harder to find, as what qualifies as a “serious injury” is open to interpretation. But we do know, for example, that the average American driver will be in 3 to 4 car accidents over a lifetime. A new study, however, does shine light on the reasons how we get injured and finds surprising regional differences on a state-by-state basis.

1 in 6 Americans Files an Injury Claim Each Year

Healthcare database site Amino compiles voluminous records about the American healthcare system for the purposes of providing information to patients, doctors, and healthcare industry participants and observers. The company recently delved into some of those records to see what it could find about the reasons we get injured.

All in all, about 1 in 6 Americans files a claim for an injury each year. The most common claims each year are for bruising, open wounds, and falls. Interestingly, the northern half of the United States is dominated by states where open wounds are the most common injury and the southern half is dominated by states where bruising is the most common injury, with only Colorado having a different most common injury: falls.

Californians Suffer Disproportionately High Motor Vehicle Accident Claims

Where the Amino study gets more interesting is in looking at each state’s most disproportionately high injury rates. In other words, the study looked at injuries in each state that were the highest in comparison with the national rate for that injury.

In California, the most disproportionately high injury rate was injuries relating to motor vehicle accidents. This should come as no surprise as California cities are frequently ranked among the worst cities for driving in the United States. New Mexico, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee also had motor vehicle accident injuries as their disproportionately highest accident.