Understanding Fatal Crash Reporting Patterns in Bangladeshi Online Media using Text Mining

Traffic crashes are a major public health concern. In 2016, traffic crashes resulted in over 1.35 million deaths worldwide. In Bangladesh alone, the number of reported traffic fatalities was 2,376 in 2016. However, the World Health Organization estimated that the true number of traffic fatalities in Bangladesh ranges between 20,730 and 29,177. Editorial traffic crash reports in Bangladesh, and the number of crashes that are reported, vary widely among different media outlets. This study employed a Google News Alert to collect fatal crash reports from online English daily newspapers. The current study compiled a database of 419 fatal crash-related reports over a six-month period (November 2018–April 2019). The reports contain a total of 81,019 words. The results of this study…