Ask most people to name the leading causes of death in America and you’ll hear heart disease, cancer, and stroke, in that order. That was true for decades. It isn’t anymore.
Around 2015, deaths from accidents (the CDC’s catch-all for unintentional injuries like car crashes, falls, and, increasingly, drug overdoses) pulled ahead of stroke, and they’ve held the #3 spot every year since. The gap blew open during the pandemic, when accident deaths jumped from about 173,000 in 2019 to 227,000 in 2022, most of that the overdose crisis. Both have eased a little since, but accidents are still ahead.
Heart disease and cancer, for the record, haven’t budged from #1 and #2. Together they still account for a little under half of all US deaths. It’s the rung below them that’s been rearranged. See the full ranking on Causes of Death.