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Show Need for Safety Education Return of children to the nation's classrooms again stresses the need for increased safety education, it is pointed out by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. 1 Each year, the company's statisticians report, about 6,000 children from 5 to 14 years of age are killed accidentally. This, is two-fifths of all the deaths in this age range. The next leading cause of death cancer takes only a third as many lives as accidents. "Both parents and teachers have the responsibility for inculcating in-culcating safe habits on growing children. Their cooperation is needed in programs of safety sponsored by medical, public health, and community organizations. By these efforts, the unnecessary waste of life and limb among our school-age children can be sharply reduced," says the company. In an effort to pinpoint the problems involved the statisticians statis-ticians stress the following circumstances surrounding fatal accidents among school age children: Motor vehicle accidents account for two-fifths of the deaths. At ages 5-9, three out of five of the motor vehicle deaths are among children run over or hit as they play or cross streets, highways and driveways. At ages 10-14, one fourth of the children killed are pedestrians, and deaths in automobile or bicycle collisions are at their peak. Home is the place of accident in 16 per cent of the deaths among boys and 30 per cent among girls at ages 5 to 14. One-fourth of the fatal injuries among boys and one-eighth among girls occur in recreational and other outdoor places. Farm accidents account for only 7 per cent of fatalities among school age children, but at ages 10-14, when boys are helping increasingly with the farm chores, 10 per cent of the accidental loss of life among boys occurs on farms. One fifth of the accidental deaths at ages 5-14 result from drowning. Boys are the most frequent victims, drowning causing 24 per cent of all fatalities as compared with 12 per cent for girls. Drownings increase in relative frequency as children grow older. Not only do the older children participate more often in swimming, boating and other sports, but they are also increasingly increas-ingly permitted to do so on their own. Falls injure many children, but kill relatively few only 3 per cent of the fatalities being from this cause. Among boys at ages 10-14, 13 per cent of the accidental deaths result from careless use of firearms. Fires, explosions, and a wide variety of mishaps such as those involving machinery, falling objects, electric current, and railroad trains, also contribute to the accidental deaths among our school age children. , oOo : |