What causes more deaths, vending machines or wolves?

I spent many hours during my holidays watching episodes of the West Wing. I love this show and I have picked up a few random facts, that I will share with you over the coming weeks. Today however, the fact that caught my eye happened whilst one of the characters, CJ, was listening to a group of people who were lobbying to have an Animals Only Highway built across the United States of America (USA) and into Canada (this has actually begun construction in real life, and is referred to as Y2Y). The group were using the example of a wolf, called Pluie (this wolf was also a real life wolf who was tracked, and provided inspiration for Y2Y), and in using this example stated that more people in the USA die from vending machines than wolf attacks. This is a statistic that is hard to find on the internet, and reminds me of another statistic which is equally hard to prove, 'that more people are kicked to death each year by donkeys than die in airplane crashes.'

These are two comparisons that are trying to make people think of the big picture, rather than focus on these facts in a small context, however from what I can find (in my 10 minute Google search), there are no statistics gathered around how many, if any, people are kicked to death each year by donkeys, however airplane fatalities are very well documented. Therefore I don't think that this statistic can be supported, although I am sure people will continue to use this comparison. As to the amount of wolf deaths versus that of vending machines, I think we may have a winner! Although I could not find statistics, from sources that were anywhere near credible, around the number of deaths per year by vending machine in the USA, I did find one Australian vending machine website that stated of the 15 injuries by vending machines recorded, only three resulted in death. Now there is not much detail around this statement, so it is my assumption these statistics are from all recorded incidences in Australia. I also found another website which stated that in North America (including Alaska and Canada) in the 100 years of the 20th century 20-30 wolf attacks were recorded and only three resulted in death, all due to rabies. Australia has a much smaller population than the USA, 20 million versus 300 million  so there are around 15 times more people in the USA. So if you calculate that Australia has had three vending machine deaths, you could reasonable multiply this number by 15 to get 45 deaths by vending machines in the USA (I know this is not exact, there are many other factors to consider, but lets just go with it). So based on this, you could reasonably state that more people's deaths are attributed to vending machines in the USA than to wolves!

I sourced many sites, Y2Y, the Yellowstone Insider around wolf attacks, Snopes, around the donkey deaths and SVA vending machines.