Dog attacks have become more common in recent years, with new reports of incidents seeming to crop up nearly every day. Recorded violent incidents have markedly increased over the last decade-and-a-half in Britain alone, with medical officials considering whether to classify bites as a public health concern. International figures have only intensified the debate around dangerous breeds, and data has revealed the dogs most commonly associated with fatal attacks.
US organisation DogsBite.org, a group that advocates for dog attack victims, conducted a multi-year report published in 2018 that recorded more than a decade of fatal incidents across the Atlantic.
The group compiled data from more than 400 cases from 2005 to 2017 in which a dog killed a human and found the 10 most dangerous breeds.
Of the 435 in total, the group found that one dog, the pit bull, was associated with the most deaths.
The study found that the breeds were responsible for 284 deaths – well over half the total.
The sum translates to roughly 65.6 percent, making pit bulls the most dangerous breed by far inside the dataset.
Rottweilers, another breed with a bad reputation, came second but were associated with 241 fewer deaths.
Of the recorded attacks Rottweilers were responsible for 45, which translates to 10.4 percent of the total.
German Shepherds ranked third with fewer than half the number of associated fatalities.
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The dogs killed 20 people between 2005 and 2017, making up 4.6 percent of the total incidents.
The remaining seven on the list of dangerous breeds compiled by DogsBite include mixed-breed dogs, American bulldogs, mastiffs and bull mastiffs, huskies, “unknown”, Labrador retrievers and boxers.
Between them, they are responsible for fewer than four percent of the overall attacks each.
But, altogether, they represent the remaining 19.8 percent of more than a decade of attacks.
While the data was compiled from the US, dog attacks are becoming increasingly frequent in the UK.
Hospital records for England have shown a significant increase in attendances for dog-related injuries since 2007.
The records show that 15 years ago, the total number of attendances stood at 4,699.
From 2021 to 2022, the number of attendances markedly increased to 8,819, with 10 deaths recorded in 2022, four of which were children.
