fatality rate

noun

plural fatality rates

: the number of deaths from a specific cause

Last year, South Carolina had the nation's third-highest highway fatality rate, with 1,064 people killed in wrecks on the state's roads.

—Joseph S. Stroud

McGuire is a practitioner of what he calls the king of all extreme sports. BASE—an acronym for building, antenna, span (bridge) and earth (cliffs)—jumping has one of the sporting world's highest fatality rates: in its 18-year history, 46 participants have been killed.

—Karl Taro Greenfield

specifically : case fatality rate

Dysentery, in which fatality rates in untreated cases range as high as 50 percent, is especially dangerous to children.

—James C. Riley

Examples of fatality rate in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The fatality rate for bicyclists and motorcyclists rose by more than 30%. —Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News, 30 Jan. 2024

Mississippi, the state with the highest motor vehicle fatality rate in the country last year, has been particularly creative. —Tribune News Service, The Mercury News, 22 June 2024

Increasingly, the United States stands alone, with an overall traffic fatality rate that’s 50 percent higher than comparable nations in Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia. —Vox Staff, Vox, 13 May 2024

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fatality rate of driver/sales workers (a group that includes delivery drivers) was 14.6 per 100k in 2022 — higher than the rate for protective services workers like police officers and firefighters (10.2 per 100k) and miners (11.7 per 100k). —Mark Dent, thehustle.co, 19 Apr. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1866, in the meaning defined above

Medical Definition

fatality rate

noun

: the number of deaths from a specific cause

… the inclusion of air bags and other design improvements in vehicles, the use of seat belts and even the increasing maturity of the driving population have combined to lower the fatality rate on U. S. highways by 29 percent since 1987.

—Stefan Thomke et al., Scientific American

specifically : case fatality rate

Dysentery, in which fatality rates in untreated cases range as high as 50 percent, is especially dangerous to children.

—James C. Riley, The American Historical Review