morbid numeracy, answers

[jnala]

(Posted this before, but crossposts from Dreamwidth appear to be broken at the moment...)

Please answer the earlier poll first; I am really curious what people's initial guesses are on this.

Comments

[whipartist]

I dug up some numbers that had just under 33K motor vehicle deaths in 2010, and around 31K firearm deaths. I think the latter is a more interesting statistic than just homicides. Plus, it's an apples to apples comparison, since it includes accidental deaths and suicides as well as homicides.

[jnala]

I considered asking about "accidental firearm deaths and firearm homicides", which would be an apples to apples comparison, since there are very few suicides by motor vehicle. I decided it was needlessly clunky because accidental death figures wouldn't change the comparison any, being so small relative to homicide (or suicide) numbers.

As for what statistic is "more interesting", that depends on one's perspective and priorities.

[jpmassar]

The "correct" comparison is probably deaths caused by or using automobiles (which would include pedestrians & bicyclists killed) vs. deaths caused by firearms.

I knew that motor vehicle deaths were similar to firearm deaths. I didn't think about the distinction between accidental firearm deaths and intentional ones. Had I, I might have gotten them all right.

[jnala]

The stats for motor vehicle deaths do include pedestrians and bicyclists killed. They do not include non-impact deaths caused by the motor vehicle (notably suicide via exhaust asphyxiation).

[whipartist]

Firearm and motor vehicle deaths, 2009 not 2010: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

59.8% of the firearm deaths were suicides. 36.7% were homicides. I guess that leaves 3.5% as accidents.

Also, there were more suicides by firearm (18,735) than by all other means combined (18,174).

[cruiser]

They also don't include impact deaths that occur when automobiles fall on people working on them. Admittedly, it's not a very large number (Googling "car fell on him" the first page has 4 deaths this year), but if we want to be thorough, we'd need to include them. Since the CDC already includes homicides, suicides and accidents, I don't think there are any other possible firearms-related deaths to include.

I expect if we worked at it, we could come up with at least another half-dozen or so motor vehicle deaths a year that the NHTSA doesn't include because they are non-traffic deaths - off the top of my head, I can come up with auto/motorcycle racing and cars falling on mechanics.