Slip and Fall Statistics in the United States

Falls Now Kill More Americans Than Car Crashes Do

Unintentional falls killed 48,308 people in the United States in 2024.

Motor vehicle crashes killed 41,241.

The fall has quietly become the second-deadliest preventable injury in America, and among older adults its death rate is still climbing.

Every figure on this page names its source and its data year.

Statistics last verified against their sources on August 22, 2026. Where an old figure still circulates, the $50 billion cost estimate, the third-place death ranking, this page carries the current one.

If a fall on someone else's property has put your family in these numbers, call (888) 713-6653 for a free case review, any hour.

 

The Fall Toll in Four Federal Numbers

The core national figures, each from the CDC's current data pages unless noted:^[1]

Two things stand out. Nearly nine in ten fall deaths are people 65 and older, which makes fall prevention, and fall litigation, largely a story about older adults. And falls rank second among preventable-injury deaths at 24 percent of the national total, behind only poisoning and now ahead of motor vehicle crashes.^[2]

One in Four Older Adults Falls Every Year, and the Rate Is Rising

More than 14 million adults 65 and older, one in four, report falling each year, and about 37 percent of those falls cause an injury needing medical treatment or restricting activity.^[3]

The trend runs the wrong direction. The age-adjusted fall death rate among older adults rose 21 percent between 2018 and 2024, from 64.7 to 78.4 deaths per 100,000, and over two decades the rates for Americans 85 and older have doubled for men and more than doubled for women.^[4] An aging population explains part of it; it does not explain it away.

Two CDC observations matter for families: fewer than half of older adults who fall tell their doctor, and falling once doubles the chance of falling again. The first fall is a warning, medically and, when it happened on unsafe property, legally.

Stairs and Floors Send 3.1 Million Americans to the ER a Year

Where do the falls happen? The consumer-product injury system gives the clearest answer: stairs, ramps, landings, and floors were associated with 3,101,789 emergency-treated injuries in 2024, the largest product category in the entire surveillance system.^[5]

Stairways alone account for roughly a million ER visits a year in the leading published study of national data.^[6]

For premises claims, the venue list doubles as a liability map: the defective staircase, the wet supermarket aisle, the unmarked step-down, the icy entrance. The legal question in each is the same, whether the property owner knew or should have known, and the venue-specific versions fill our staircase fall and wet floor claim guides.

What Falls Break: 319,000 Hip Fractures and the Leading Cause of TBI

Two injuries define the serious end of fall cases.

Hip fractures first: nearly 319,000 older Americans are hospitalized for hip fractures each year, and in the most recent CDC analysis falls caused 83 percent of hip-fracture deaths and 88 percent of the ED visits and hospitalizations.^[7] For an older adult, a broken hip is routinely the injury that ends independent living, which is why our hip fracture claim guide treats it as a life-change case rather than an orthopedic bill.

Brain injuries second: the CDC identifies falls as the most common cause of traumatic brain injury, and adults over 75 have the highest TBI hospitalization and death rates of any group. The full picture lives on our TBI statistics page; the practical point is that a fall case with head involvement is a brain injury case until the medicine says otherwise.

Falls at Work: 844 Deaths a Year and the 30-Foot Detail

Workplace falls, slips, and trips killed 844 workers in 2024, down from 885 in 2023, with more than one in ten of the deaths involving a fall from over 30 feet.^[8]

Construction accounts for 389 of those deaths, roughly 46 percent of the national total from a single industry, the subject of our separate construction fatality data page. On the nonfatal side, falls, slips, and trips produced 479,480 days-away-from-work injury cases across 2023 and 2024 combined, with a median of 13 lost days each.

Work falls run through a different legal channel than premises falls: workers' compensation first, with third-party claims against property owners, contractors, and equipment makers where someone outside the employer shares the blame.

The $80 Billion Bill, and Who Actually Pays It

Healthcare spending for nonfatal older-adult falls reached $80 billion in 2020, the current peer-reviewed federal estimate, with the majority paid by Medicare.^[9] The $50 billion figure still quoted across the internet is the 2015 estimate this one replaced.

Inside a single claim, the same economics appear as the medical bills, the rehabilitation, the home modifications, and the care an injured person now needs, and when the fall happened on negligently maintained property, the law moves that cost from the injured family to the owner who let the hazard exist. Foreseeability is rarely a hard argument in fall cases; the numbers on this page are the proof that nobody operating a property in America can claim surprise that people fall.