Don’t stop talking now, gabriela. That’s honestly fascinating.
Why thank you, and pick away - that’s what General [del]Pedantry[/del] Questions is for. 
Of course I bow to your expertise in statistical analysis of what actually kills people from falls and bus impacts, since I myself only have a single anecdote of a girl I knew dying (nearly) instantly from head trauma after being hit by a bus in a 20 mph zone. In fact, I’d be surprised if too many people are hit by buses travelling much more than about 20 mph, since busy traffic, driver wariness in areas with lots of pedestrians, and the usual application of at least some braking before impact would tend to limit impact speed - I’d still suggest that 35+ mph full side impacts alone would be largely fatal, and I guess the fact is that falling people do generally get an arm or leg between their head and the ground. So, yes, I suppose the bus model isn’t quite accurate and it might well be more like 30 ft for 50% lethality falls, and I think Tev’s unlucky chap is going to have to flip over the lower balcony and land on his head or some ground-based protrusion to die plausibly.
And Fish is also clearly in a better position than me to analyse mortality statistics from slips or faints or whatever. Again, my only anecdotes are our alcoholic ex-drummer who fell over onto the pavement, and an old lady in Liverpool who slipped on some ice, both again dying from head trauma. I assumed these stories weren’t that uncommon, but I’ll retract “regularly” unreservedly.
Not completely on topic but something I found interesting all the same is a statistic I heard on the British T.V. programme Q.I. (Quite Interesting). The presenter said that the chances of survival for a cat falling from height decrease up to the 7th floor but the survival rate increases for falls higher than 7 floors. This being due to a combination of the cat having time to right itself to prepare for landing on it’s feet and also being able to “glide” to some degree by going spread eagle to reduce impact speed. Like I said it isn’t entirely relevant, but it is QI
I believe Cecil covered this at some point. Such a study was done, but it was inconclusive, since there was no way to count the cats who jumped or fell at 7 stories plus and turned into cat pancake. The vets who saw cats only saw the ones brought in who had a chance to be treated and not the flatcats who were peeled up like a fruit roll-up and frisbeed into the trash.
I’ll try to find that link.
I stopped posting to this thread because it seemed to be going away quietly, and I assumed the OP had everything needed to off a character without being ridiculed.
But I think you all are right: we have to say what killed him. The OP specified no head trauma. Details like the bloody drops spattering from the mouth are cool too.
I think we can do one of two things: either come up with a common injury that you can sustain falling off a balcony without falling on your head, or come up with a weird congenital problem nobody would ever know they had, so they die on impact.
Common injury without head injury… um… has to fall on heels or knees on floor, hunh? Could the character bounce and skid, the way some of my pedestrians struck by cars have bounced and skidded? You know, red scrape across skin at first impact site, slightly less red at second bounce site, nearly yellow at third bounce site, purely yellow and dry at fourth skid site. (Abrasions are only red while you’re alive; postmortem abrasions are yellow, because subcutaneous fat is yellow, and if you have a blood pressure of zero, your scrapes don’t bleed. I am always excited when I can track the course of a decedent from live to dead by the changing colors.)
But that didn’t kill him. Bones! I know he’s dead, but from WHAT! Um… okay… can he land on his chin, and break his neck? It’ll be the tiniest little abrasion, but he’ll be dead on third bounce.
Or he could land chest first on something upholstered and soft, and die from commotio cordis. That’ll work. He’ll look puzzled, get out two words, and go limp. Even immediate defibrillation won’t save him. (Classically softball to chest in young athletes. The heart has to be in exactly the right phase of the cycle - physicians who care for live people, help me out here.)
Oh! I know!! Have him land on his butt, and his pelvis fractures away from his spine in two places, and he gets retroperitoneal bleeding from a thousand tiny veins too small to repair surgically! Then it takes him a couple of hours to die - plenty of time for moving deathbed scenes - but, even with the utmost in medical care, he’s a goner. Even the interventional radiologists won’t be able to embolize enough of them.
As for congenital anomalies or unsuspected natural disease - He could have a mild Arnold-Chiari that he never knew he had, and the impact jolts his brain loose just enough to cause him to die seizing, in status epilepticus. Or an atrial myxoma, part of which fractures off from the impact, and goes out the aorta, and embolizes one of his coronary arteries.
I admit that one’s a stretch,
Gabriela
Unless I missed it, this study did not specify what surface the fls occurred on. A fall out of a bedroom window onto a flower bed from 20 feet seems much more desirable than a fall from 10 feet onto concrete.
Actually, he didn’t specify no head trauma, he just specified that the character wouldn’t land on his head. I assume that means the character would attempt to make a good landing, either on his feet, knees, hands, or some combination thereof; but he could subsequently hit the ground with his head, I suppose.
Heck, no head trauma? What fun is that? We’d rule out all those nice intercranial hemorrhages and stuff. 
If the character did attempt to brake his fall by using his hands or feet, he might have incidental injuries such as bilateral fractures of the ulna and/or radius. (I see this happen with some frequency with ATV accidents: some joker goes over a dropoff with his four-wheeler and braces for impact with his arms stiffened, breaking them both in the process of landing.)
I’ve even seen people try to stop themselves from falling on the way down — really, Hollywood needs to do a better job at showing us how not to get hurt when we’re jumping off buildings. One carpenter, claw hammer in hand, managed to stab the claw of the hammer into a plywood wall to slow his fall. For his effort he was rewarded with dislocations of his shoulder, elbow, and multiple dislocations in his hand and fingers. Lovely.
Arrrgh, intracranial hemorrhages. An intercranial hemorrhage would be pretty difficult if you weren’t a hydra.
I’ve seen the photos. It wasn’t that clean. Ecch.
You are so right. So right it’s painful to contemplate. Lovely to contemplate. One of those two.
Thanks for the ATV accident info. I only see fatal ones, and I haven’t seen many.
Gabriela
I know this is super old (like 8-years ago), but I have to reply because the people responding have no idea what’s real and what’s not.
For all intents and purposes, a fall of 30-feet (or 9-meters / 3 stories) is rare for a human to survive.
I believe the Hemlock Society agrees with that data. They said that six floors was enough to kill, but that 10 floors was better in that it was enough to kill quickly.
I also heard it was 10 floors.
Not my area of expertise, but from what I’ve read, 3 stories is roughly the 50 percent survival point, which is a much better survival rate than “rare for a human to survive” would imply.
Wikipedia lists the 50 percent survival height for children (not adults) as 4 to 5 stories, and cites an article in the Journal of Pediatric Medicine. I wasn’t able to find a good cite for adults. I did however come across an interesting article about a woman who fell six stories. The building manager came running out to her, and she propped herself up on one elbow, looked up at him and something like “huh, fell six stories and not even hurt.” Definitely a rare case, but in a thread where people are saying six stories should be enough to reliably kill someone it’s worth mentioning (note - I’m not saying six stories isn’t likely to be fatal, just found it an interesting outlying case - I believe the LD95 number quoted upthread).
Another data point: Almost everyone who jumps off of the Golden Gate bridge (roughly 200 feet into water) dies.
No - we have tetrahedron teabags here that are advertised as pyramids. It annoys me intensely.
Well, no. Those have no bottom side so all the sides are exposed so it actually has 6 sides because the inside is visible. Now if you count all the sides on tea bags that have a bottom but the water can get through it, then you would have 8 sides working but if all the insides were solid, then you are back to 4, Not to leave out those sides that might have solid sides on the inside or the outside, it could really become a sticky wicket especially before tea time.
If anyone from this thread is still listening, I stumbled upon this discussion from the opposite POV. The piece I’m writing needs a small child to survive a fall from a balcony. The child is probably about two, might be asleep and is definitely wrapped up in a thick blanket or quilt, and lands on a wood floor. It’s not on ground level (so the wood floor is resting on joists, not a slab). The fall will result in some spinal injury that won’t become apparent for some time (neglectful parents), so the child walks away, albeit in some discomfort, but does not receive any medical care. Clearly, by chance, the child could land, within the padding of the quilt, on its side or back (I like that martial arts mat image) if that would help for this to be believable. The balcony is at the top of an ordinary set of residential stairs, although the ceilings are high in the residence; let’s say ten feet. So, could a sleepy two year old, wrapped in a blanket, survive a ten foot fall into wood (if necessary, the floor could be ‘padded’ with random junk)?
There have been plenty of toddlers that have fallen more than ten feet and survived.
These are just from the first page of google:
Firefighters: Toddler survives fall from 3-story apartment
http://www.news4jax.com/news/firefighters-toddler-survives-fall-from-3story-apartment/30657264
MIRACLE BOY: Toddler survives 11-story fall in Cedar-Riverside
A toddler surviving a ten foot fall is certainly plausible.
Here is one who fell 20’ onto concrete and suffered cuts and bruises: Toddler survives falling 20ft out of window
15-month-old Minneapolis boy, Musa Dayib survived a fall from his 11-story balcony at the Riverside Plaza apartments. He has a fractured backbone, fractured arms, skull fractures. The child had landed on a thin patch of mulch. 1-Year-Old Expected To Survive After 11-Story Fall - CBS Minnesota
Darn - ninja’d