TRUTH.
Sharks have one of the most fearsome reputations in the animal kingdom. Vending machines have one of the most innocuous. And yet, by the numbers, the machine dispensing your afternoon snack is statistically more likely to kill you than anything lurking beneath the waves.
A 1995 report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission tracked vending machine incidents from 1978 to 1995 and found at least 37 deaths and 113 injuries caused by machines tipping over — an average of roughly 2.18 fatalities per year. A 2022 Slate investigation confirmed that fatal shark attacks in the U.S. hover around one per year. The yearly risk of dying from a vending machine accident works out to approximately 1 in 112 million. The yearly risk of a fatal shark attack: around 1 in 250 million. Vending machines are roughly twice as deadly.
The mechanism is almost entirely human-caused. Vending machines don't attack — they tip. A fully loaded machine can weigh close to 1,000 pounds, and the deaths overwhelmingly occur when frustrated customers rock or shake the machine after a snack gets stuck or a coin doesn't return. The machine falls forward. The outcome is swift and entirely preventable.
Toby Daly-Engel, director of the Shark Conservation Lab at the Florida Institute of Technology, says she regularly cites this statistic in her public talks — not to diminish fear of sharks, but to demonstrate how badly human beings miscalibrate risk. We are wired to fear things with teeth and ignore things that require maintenance.
The shark had nothing to do with it. The Doritos did.
A 1995 report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission tracked vending machine incidents from 1978 to 1995 and found at least 37 deaths and 113 injuries caused by machines tipping over — an average of roughly 2.18 fatalities per year. A 2022 Slate investigation confirmed that fatal shark attacks in the U.S. hover around one per year. The yearly risk of dying from a vending machine accident works out to approximately 1 in 112 million. The yearly risk of a fatal shark attack: around 1 in 250 million. Vending machines are roughly twice as deadly.
The mechanism is almost entirely human-caused. Vending machines don't attack — they tip. A fully loaded machine can weigh close to 1,000 pounds, and the deaths overwhelmingly occur when frustrated customers rock or shake the machine after a snack gets stuck or a coin doesn't return. The machine falls forward. The outcome is swift and entirely preventable.
Toby Daly-Engel, director of the Shark Conservation Lab at the Florida Institute of Technology, says she regularly cites this statistic in her public talks — not to diminish fear of sharks, but to demonstrate how badly human beings miscalibrate risk. We are wired to fear things with teeth and ignore things that require maintenance.
The shark had nothing to do with it. The Doritos did.
