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 recorded fatality rate in 2023 was 17 people per billion passengers carried. —Marisa Garcia, Forbes, 5 Jan. 2025

Texas’ fatality rate for the first nine months of 2024 also was higher than California’s at 1.34. —Jovi Dai, The Mercury News, 4 Jan. 2025

But while the fatality rate for most wheel well stowaways is high, some people have survived the ordeal. —Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 7 Jan. 2025

The case fatality rate for the ancestral strain of Covid-19 was estimated to be around 2.6%, for example. —Cnn.com Wire Service, The Mercury News, 7 Jan. 2025

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