Casualties/Fatalities in the U.S. for Drunk-Driving, Suicide, and Terrorism

Description

These are fatalities (and, in the case of terrorism, casualties as well) for drunk-driving, suicide, and acts of terrorism in the U.S. spanning 1970 to 2018. Only one of these is sufficiently important to command public attention despite being the least severe public bad. Do you want to guess which one?

Usage

DST

Format

A data frame with 49 observations on the following 5 variables.

year

the year

nkill

a numeric vector for the number killed in acts of terrorism

terrtotal

a numeric vector for the number killed or wounded in acts of terrorism

suicides

a numeric vector for the number of suicides

ddfat

a numeric vector for the number of drunk-driving fatalities

Details

Following my own work in Political Research Quarterly, terror incidents with unknown fatalities or number wounded were imputed to be 1. In those cases, the GTD has reason to believe at least one person died or was wounded, but doesn't know how many. GTD is weird about 1993, so perhaps treat those observations with some care (though it does well to capture the WTC bombing that year). Suicides include only those who passed, not those who survived a suicide attempt. Drunk-driving fatalities seem to include those who were killed in a drunk-driving accident despite not being drunk themselves.

Source

Global Terrorism Database (Sept. 2019 update), Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Department of Transportation