This is an interesting if somewhat macabre question, but it is relevant beyond the movie Fargo. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studied work-related injuries in the US from 1992 to 2002. Their research found that there were 31 fatal injuries delivered by mobile wood chippers over that ten year period. Quick division gives us 3.1 wood chipper deaths per year in the United States. Extrapolating this number to worldwide results would be a somewhat difficult enterprise. The US is an exceptional country in global economic terms; it is the wealthiest nation in the world. Professional wood chippers, of a size large enough to engulf an entire human, are extremely expensive machines; the asking price for used models can be upwards of $20,000. Thus, the number of deaths related to wood chipper accidents could be higher than normal in the US because it is a country where more of these machines could be purchased and used. In nations with smaller economies than the US these machines would be much rarer and thus the deaths would be fewer. My thinking is that there are probably no more than 20 deaths per year worldwide from wood chippers.
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