In 2000, the top three killers were chronic, noncommunicable diseases - causes of death well known to all of us: heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Although not shown in this table, if you combine deaths due to accidents, homicide and suicide then injury becomes the third leading cause of death, just ahead of stroke. “Accident” is really a term to avoid because it implies fatalism and helplessness. Epidemiologists strongly prefer the term unintentional injury to accidental injury. This is because such injury is both predictable and preventable at the level of populations or groups, if not for given individuals.