National Holiday Road Toll

Listening to all the reports on the national holiday road toll at this time of year, I started wondering why it is that this one particular type of fatality attracts so much attention. After all, heart disease and other circulatory diseases account for over ten times as many deaths as traffic accidents, so why isn't there a national tally of this more significant problem, particularly when Christmas is a time for over-indulging in food and drinks, and is the biggest time of the year for clogging your arteries. The reason is that car accidents are more spectacular. How illogical is that?

Here are the top causes of death in 2008, from the ABS. Car accidents are not even in the top twenty.

	2008
Cause of death	no.	Rank
Ischaemic heart diseases	23 665	1
Strokes	11 973	2
Dementia and Alzheimer disease	8 171	3
Trachea and lung cancer	7 946	4
Chronic lower respiratory diseases	6 255	5
Diabetes	4 191	6
Colon and rectum cancer	4 120	7
Blood and lymph cancer	3 889	8
Heart failure	3 360	9
Diseases of the kidney and urinary system	3 224	10
Prostate cancer	3 031	11
Breast cancer	2 788	12
Pancreatic cancer	2 291	13
Suicide	2 190	14
Skin cancers	1 857	15
Hypertensive diseases	1 824	16
Influenza and pneumonia	1 742	17
Cardiac arrhythmias	1 547	18
Cirrhosis and other diseases of liver	1 490	19
Falls	1 348	20