IStock Photo 11497590 © Jonny Kristoffersson

Playwright Tennessee Williams brought down his final curtain by choking on a bottle cap in 1983. While it certainly has dramatic effect, the odds a person will die from choking on a non-food object in a year are just 1 in 96,300—similar to the odds that an accidental death will be due to being bitten or struck by an alligator (1 in 96,080).

Even those odds are higher than the odds of choking to death on food. Of course, there’s always a chance a child can choke on a bite of meat or a piece of apple, but while parents are meticulously cutting up food for their little ones to reduce any risks, they might want to take a closer look at the toy box: only 1 in 4.84 choking deaths is caused by food, the rest by things like parts of toys, or coins. The odds of dying from choking on food in a year are just 1 in 343,300—in comparison, the odds of dying from falling down the stairs are twice as great (1 in 164,700).

Those odds used to be far worse before the mid-1970s, when Dr. Heimlich invented his eponymous maneuver and encouraged the use of a universal sign—grabbing the throat—to indicate choking. A paper in the September, 1976 issue of Heart and Lung revealed that food choking claimed the lives of 3,900 people yearly in the US. Thirty years later, in 2006, that number had fallen to 872, according to the CDC.

But there are still plenty of trips to the hospital. A 2002 report by the CDC looked at all the reported choking episodes in children from the prior year and found that for every choking death, there were 100 visits to emergency rooms for choking-related situations—a total of 17,537 children under the age of 15 treated for a choking episode. The majority of the 160 who died had ingested a nonfood object. And even those rates have been declining in recent decades, thanks in part to strict toy manufacturing regulations and product warning labels.

A nod also goes to the legions who have taken time to learn the now-famous Heimlich maneuver. In 2009, “Top Chef” host Tom Colicchio heroically performed the Heimlich at a Washington, DC dinner party, saving the life of fellow chef Joan Nathan. For those (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime emergency situations, being prepared to act quickly and correctly is critical.

According to history, a son of the Roman Emperor Claudius I is said to have choked to death on a pear he tossed into the air and then playfully tried to swallow. Today he would stand a good chance of being saved.

The modern odds of choking to death on food are the same as the odds a person in Alabama will be killed by hazardous weather in a year.