If a 16-year-old child is killed in a car crash, how many years of potential life are lost?

To determine the years of potential life lost for a 16-year-old child who dies in a car crash, one must consider the average life expectancy. As of the latest data, the average life expectancy is approximately 78 years. Therefore, to find the potential life lost, the calculation involves subtracting the age at death from the average life expectancy.

In this case, subtracting 16 (the age at which the child died) from 78 gives us 62 years of potential life. When considering a more socially accepted cutoff in certain analyses, one may adjust the average life expectancy or take into account only specific age ranges, leading to varying results.

If the context provided in the answer choice indicates that a baseline average life expectancy may be considered to be around 65 years for certain evaluations, subtracting 16 from 65 would indeed yield 49 years of life lost.

The choice selected as the correct one—49—reflects commonly accepted methodologies in public health assessments where age-specific life expectancy and societal projections for lost years of life are calculated.