Jessie Singer, author of “There Are No Accidents” (Simon & Schuster, 336 pages), works for a nonprofit dedicated to making cities safer for pedestrians and cyclists, but her views of error and accidents go far beyond urban life and cars. She begins with the story of a dear friend who, as a teenager, was struck and killed by a car while bicycling in Manhattan—a starting point for her discussion of accidental death and the ways in which the more powerful in society have benefitted from and promoted the idea that individual errors and mistakes are the reason why so many people die.
Singer’s statistics surprised me, such as this: There were 173,000 accidental deaths in 2019, the latest year for which data was available. Also, one in 23 people in the U.S. will die by accident, she writes, with an annual cost for all injuries and fatalities of more than $1 trillion.