US Road Fatalities 2001-09 mapped with OpenStreetMap

http://map.itoworld.com/road-casualties-usa

by harrylove • 15 years ago

207 100 15 years ago

map.itoworld.com

Very well done. It would be interesting to have the ability to click on one of the reports and get details--something I'm sure you would have done if it was available or possible.

tomkinstinch• 15 years ago

Toggling each type on/off might be interesting as well.

I was immediately curious if there is a cluster of bicyclist fatalities anywhere. I clicked on the icons in the key expecting to change the visibility of each category, but that did nothing.

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

I too was disappointed by that oversight.

s00pcan• 15 years ago

This is not very interesting without any ability to add a filter.

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

This has just reaffirmed my fear of east-coasters.

colanderman• 15 years ago

More so east-coast roads. It seems to me like the west coast has more traffic-calming devices (though my experience there is limited to two weeks of bicycling in Seattle and Portland). Our idea of "traffic calming" on the east coast is to add strobe lights to traffic signals.

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

I dunno, east-coasters seem to have more road rage too. When you get to New York, people are completely and utterly pissed at eachother. Every time I go to Chicago, I notice that drivers all seem to have this underlying urge to kill all pedestrians which we don't get in California.

popdensity• 15 years ago

You probably said this in jest, but if you look at a map of US population density, it is nearly identical.

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

Well, it was mostly in jest, yes, but I think it's more than just that, I think it's also that here on the west coast we tend to drive a lot better than people in New York ;)

ImprovedSilence3• 15 years ago

I was never such a violent hateful douchebag as I was when living in DC (nova) and driving everywhere. It's something in the roads I'm telling you.

laconian• 15 years ago

Found my friend that died in 2002, though it only reported his death and not his fiancee's as well.

What a sad nitpick! :(

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

Maybe the fiancee's icon is placed under their icon?

fennecfoxen• 15 years ago

I saw some bicycle icons barely visible peeking around from behind car icons at certain intersections. No way to see the bike icon. Weak UI design.

tobiasSoftware• 15 years ago

I think a per-person version of this chart would be interesting as well, dividing the map into regions, counting the number of accidents, and dividing it by the number of people in the region. Placement of accidents is less interesting than chance you will have an accident if you live there IMO. Still cool though :)

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

East coast: death, west coast: not so death

mahyarm• 15 years ago

Most population graphs of the USA look like this in general.

nostromo2• 15 years ago

Where there are more people, there are more accidents.

It'd be interesting to see it corrected for population.

pvarangot• 15 years ago

Exactly, and the safest place to go drive your car through is the Grand Canyon.

eande• 15 years ago

Great chart and SF downtown has a denser deep blue color; always suspected that is a more risky place for pedestrian.

nostromo2• 15 years ago

If you think SF is bad, look at Manhattan.

What's with all the 99 year old deaths in NYC? Bad data?

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

I dunno, Manhattan is sloooooooow-moving, I'm not sure how you can fatally injure somebody at 5MPH gridlock!

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

Maybe New Yorkers just hate the elderly?

bluekeybox• 15 years ago

It's only because there are a lot of pedestrians in urban areas, not because urban areas are more dangerous for pedestrians (in fact they are probably less dangerous).

Without some way to control for density of cars/pedestrians, this chart is quite useless.

Florin_Andrei• 15 years ago

Far more fatalities in the CA Central Valley than in the SF Bay Area, even though the respective population densities are the other way round.

PLejeck14• 15 years ago

I can tell you, having lived my whole life in Modesto, the drivers here are IDIOTS. I once saw a car that careened off a perfectly straight road, 90 degrees, over the sidewalk and into a fence.

AmericanOP• 15 years ago

Not quite sure yet how this influences my recent urge to start riding motorcycles.

There seems to be a (near) 1:2 ratio between motorcycle and vehicle fatalities. I already knew motorcycle riders were 5 times more likely to get in accidents, and those accidents were 35 times more likely to result in very serious injury. In my life so far I've been in one small fender bender.

This does confirm some of the self-imposed safety rules I'm planning. No car commercial road joyriding. Lots of yellow in the hills. Highway driving seems to be relatively safe, which is comforting. Extreme caution at intersections (look at the bay bridge on-ramp). No riding at night.

mootothemax• 15 years ago

This does confirm some of the self-imposed safety rules I'm planning.

If you live near a major city, try spending a couple of weeks cycling around it first. You'll learn to spot danger warning signs at much less dangerous speeds :)

ImprovedSilence3• 15 years ago

I ride a motorcycle. They say if you're a lifetime rider, odds are you are going to get in one major crash in your lifetime. Both my uncles, several neighbors, and my grandfather have been in wrecks (none lethal, thank god), but everyone of them knows someone who died in a motorcycle accident it seems. I dumped my bike once, nothing serious, but I'm still overly cautious while riding.

My big suggestion is to act as if every car is either going to break the law (run stop signs) or not see you, so you've always got to be on the defense.

Other comments on the map, it's kinda odd feeling, finding the places of people you knew who died in a car crash, and seeing them as a statistic.

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

Well, at least one.

As for cars breaking the law- don't act like they are about to, but don't trust them. Don't be surprised when they DO screw up, and have a plan.

lutorm• 15 years ago

Being a rider before I left the Bay Area, it's kind of spooky to look at Highway 9, 84 to La Honda, and Summit road. You can literally see the yellows in the corners, and looking at the map, I can see many of those corners in my mind's eye.

That said, if you spend some time around Hwy 9 on a summer weekend, it shouldn't surprise you that the accident rate is high. If you don't ride like those people, your risk will not mimic the statistics.

wilkenm• 15 years ago

Also check out the Angeles Crest highway (just North of Los Angeles), or 'The Dragon' out in the South East. You can trace the roads by the yellow dots.

barrkel4• 15 years ago

Highway / motorway riding is excruciatingly boring, even in the absence of speed limits. I've ridden from London to Kiel in Germany and back a couple of times, via France and Luxembourg, and found it infinitely preferable to avoid motorways, even though it takes 3 days rather than one (long) day per leg. Doing 200km/h+ gets old really fast when you're going in a straight line. If you've got speed limits and intend on mostly highway riding, without a significant filtering component, I wouldn't bother with a bike.

So yes, you'll want to spend some time in the hills and curves. Don't start on an all-out superbike with torque that kicks in suddenly at high revs; start with something with a flatter torque curve, like a midrange twin (e.g. SV650 or Ninja 650r) or detuned 600. An unfaired bike, if you don't mind the looks, will feel faster from the wind blast. Most of the fun in a bike is from acceleration and corners, and on the street rather than on a track you'll want to have that fun at perhaps surprisingly low speeds. Taking a tight corner at 30mph is harder than it looks, takes more skill than a long curve at 90, and is a lot less dangerous if you crash. I've had a low-sider on my scooter (it was new to me and I didn't know its lean angle limits well enough) at about 25mph in a t-shirt and jeans (but full-face helmet, as always), and walked away with nothing more than a scratch on my arm and a few more scratches on the fairing.

You'll remember the first time a corner surprises you by tightening up half-way through. But the real warning signs come earlier than that IMO: if you find yourself letting off the throttle half-way through a turn rather than smoothly accelerating through it, or changing gear half-way through, that's a sign of poor technique and / or poor reading of the road. Even more dangerously, you can end up learning these mid-course correction habits and think you're doing well, building false confidence.

Bikes are fantastic fun and don't let the raw statistics dissuade you too much. You'll see a lot of idiots on the road doing stupid things, and get a better idea of where the stats come from. Filtering, where legal, can be intoxicatingly enjoyable. And you'll appreciate differences in road geography to a huge degree.

I've ridden in Belgium, Netherlands, northern CA, northwest France, Luxembourg, UK and Germany, in approximately increasing order of fun, though for different reasons. Belgium has terrible (back) roads and is mostly flat; northern CA has some very curvy roads, but they are often very narrow, poorly surfaced and have double-yellow no-overtaking lines to an extreme; though it does have filtering. UK also has many fairly poor country roads - a lot of hedges blocking views - but makes up for it with filtering. Germany is strictly anti-filtering, but has very high standards even for curvy minor roads, which are wide and have high speed limits (depending on state).

(I own a scooter and a big bike and live in London. Scooters are better for filtering in the city, and a lot more practical. I don't own a car, and only ever take public transport if I'll be consuming alcohol.)

rdouble3• 15 years ago

For an alternative perspective, I much prefer riding a cruiser style bike on straight, flat, empty highways in rural USA. Many Harley enthusiasts seem to feel the same way.

ovi256• 15 years ago

It's funny that you recommend a twin 650 or mono 600 as a starter bike. Not so long ago, these would be considered big boy bikes, suicidal for a beginner. I wonder what changed, the simple availability of bigger bikes or the improvement of bike safety ?

As for me, I'd recommend a tiny 250cc or even 125cc for a starter. A year or two later, you can always get a bigger one safely.

lancewiggs4• 15 years ago

Friends don't let friends ride Kawasakis, especially Ninjas.

My pet theory is that each motorcycle has a use or personality, and after riding it for a while your behaviour ends up matching the personality of the bike.

BMW tourers make you want to ride the curves from coast to coast, but do so safely. They don't mind a bit of speed, but are also content to cruise at legal limits.

Harleys want you to cruise the straight desolate highways, without a helmet (dumb, but if you are going to ride without a helmet, the a straight desolate highway is the place to do it). They also like being polished and sitting in front of cafes.

A trail bike wants you to turn left up that hill, and go explore, while a top end enduro bike wants you to do that a bit too quickly. A KTM adventure (I have one) wants you to load it up and blast across a desert, and does so remarkably well.

Sports bikes, and the Ninja is the worst no matter what the size, want you to crouch down and go as fast as possible. They eat away at your soul, and you just have to go faster and faster. There's a bad ending waiting for you, especially for early career riders.

So buy a bike that matches your use case.

The upright road/trail bike with a top box is an excellent all-round choice for commuting, adventure and a bit of safe speed. (Triumph Tiger, BMW F800GS/F65GS, BMWR1200GS, Yamaha XT etc). A sport bike is great if you are able to use it on a track, or for the occasional blast in the desolate hills. A laid back cruiser needs wide open spaces and lots of cafes - they are not about safe speed or twisties.

But the ultimate use for a bike is travel, and the further the better. Get something you are comfortable on for hours, and which has the ability to go on anywhere.

georgieporgie2• 15 years ago

Something like 70% of single-vehicle motorcycle collisions involve alcohol, so that's the big one to avoid. Here are my tips, from 17 years of riding and commuting by motorcycle:

* Avoid alcohol before riding (edit: personally, I never ride within six hours of consuming any alcohol).

* Wear high-quality, full-body protective gear.

* Avoid rush hour when possible, particularly evening rush hour when drivers are tired, cranky, and aggressively want to get home.

* Absolutely avoid riding during drunk hours. Basically, stay off the streets after 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and stay away from sporting events, concerts, etc.

lancewiggs4• 15 years ago

I emphasize that enough - riding after any alcohol is temporary citizenship.

But aside from not drinking or rising like an idiot the biggest thing we motorcyclists can do to increase our safety is to wear a high visibility jacket. It creates a noticeable difference in the percentage of other road users that see you, which addresses the major cause of accidents. Protective gear is a last resort - it's better to avoid the accident in the first place.

The best protective gear is the stuff you wear, so for short trips if you are tempted to leave the heavy gear behind, at least throw on a light flouro jacket.

cubicle67• 15 years ago

Yes, wear protective gear. Always

Go outside and have a good look at the surface of the road. Remember when you were a kid, how much it hurt if you were running and fell and skinned your knees? Now imagine running flat out and diving face first onto the road - feel the asphalt tearing your legs and arms

Now imagine the same thing, but this time you're travelling at 30mph

The difference between having large amounts of your skin literally ripped away and replaced with deeply embedded rocks and dirt (and quite possibly several weeks in hospital) and just getting up again and continuing on your way? Boots, helmet, gloves and leathers

synnik• 15 years ago

Just be smart...

My favorite bad example is a former kung fu teacher of mine. He was in a motorcycle accident that put him in a wheelchair a number of years ago. He recovered, mostly. And I always had sympathy for him, assuming he was a safe rider.

That is, until he told me the story, and it started with, "I was going 120mph in the left lane on on the LA Freeway one night..."

Don't be that guy, and you'll have much better odds.

tibbon2• 15 years ago

When you cut out really young people, inexperienced riders, people who haven't taken the MSF, intoxicated people and those on 600cc sport bikes... fatalities on a bike go down a great deal.

Many, but not all motorcycle wrecks are preventable. The guy in his mid 50's touring all around the US on his 1800cc Gold Wing is far far far less likely to get killed than a 21 year old who has 'a few drinks', and tries to impress his friends on his 600cc superbike around the city (and not wearing any gear).

Take joy rides. Learn how to use your bike. Hit the mountains. Don't be afraid of cornering- just learn how to do it. Night riding is sub-optimal I will agree, but don't be afraid to just slow down. A country road that I might rip down at 100mph during the day might become a 20mph road for me at night in the fog with bugs, recently rained on roads and deer.

Make sure your bike is well lit and you're wearing all your gear that you can stand to wear. If you're in SF like many people on HN, the weather is amicable to wearing almost full gear every day. In Austin or somewhere else hot, I doubt you could wear full gear in the summer.

wavephorm2• 15 years ago

A coworker and friend of mine was riding his motorcycle to work one morning and got run over by a schoolbus. He died instantly.

It kind of ruined the term "if you get hit by a bus" for everyone at the office.

vcadambe• 15 years ago

Here is a similar map of UK - http://map.itoworld.com/.

freejoe76• 15 years ago

This is an interesting dataset -- too bad it's such a boring map.

Two ways it could be improved:

1. Allow filtering by year, by type of death.

2. Allow data to be compared (deaths by state, by type, by year) in a non-map based form.

I'm sure there are more...

ImprovedSilence3• 15 years ago

Allow bringing icons on the bottom up to the top, there is too much overlap on multiple fatality accidents.

jberryman• 15 years ago

some sort of heatmap where number of deaths are normalized with respect to vehicle density (or I guess just population). That would give an idea of which states/regions/roads are more treacherous or have more dangerous drivers.

dromidas• 15 years ago

Vehicle density is itself a cause of increased accidents. If you normalized by it you would lose accuracy. To make it more clear, 10 cars on the same road would increase the chance of an accident non-linearly. It would be more than 10x more likely to have an accident occur there simply because there is more chaos.

nhebb• 15 years ago

... plus, move the legends off to the side.

benvanderbeek• 15 years ago

I was involved in an accident where I caused a fatality in 1999 (guy sleeping in my lane on a rural highway at 3am), so it's not on here. Otherwise I would be able to say something about its accuracy and completeness.

tsumnia• 15 years ago

Very awkward to see the number of deaths that I drive past daily... Even more awkward to think I could have been a statistic on this site a few years ago!

The searching functionality could use some work. I was unable to input the actual address of my accident and had to guess-timate. Like others said, filtering would be highly appreciated as well.

hesdeadjim• 15 years ago

I would love to see this map annotated with fatalities involving blood alcohol content > 0.08. Not sure if that information is made available though...

tibbon2• 15 years ago

Seems driving in Barrow Alaska is much safer than I thought!

I wish I could switch on and off things. I want to see motorcycles only.

danso• 15 years ago

There's a link to the NHTSA pick-a-checkbox data finder, but here's the link to the FTP site for the raw data:

ftp://ftp.nhtsa.dot.gov/fars/

Maps like these are visually interesting, but I think a stats analysis of the many characteristics the data include, such as previous DUI offenses and weather conditions, could be even more fascinating.

xbryanx• 15 years ago

I really wish maps like these would display their data on cartograms related to population - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartogram. The open west always makes my eye come up with false conclusions at first glance.

tmcw• 15 years ago

Cartograms plus zoomable web maps tend to be fail city. And, on top of that, cartograms tend to be rather unreadable. For the critique, http://www.cartogrammar.com/blog/i-hate-your-favorite-electi...

That said, it's always useful to have data be relative to population rather than absolute, if it is a relative number. I don't think that's valid in this case, because these aren't accidents 'of the population' - they're accidents of people traveling on roads, which is entirely different.

If the coloring were relative to traffic density or throughput, that'd be better.

steauengeglase• 15 years ago

Interesting, looks like the previous owner neglected to tell me that someone was killed in my driveway back in '07.

dmvaldman• 15 years ago

For a benchmark for comparison, the design firm Fathom made a map consisting of only the roads of the US and no other geographical features. It's also an awesome poster I have up in my room. It's interesting to overlay these two maps with each other.

http://fathom.info/allstreets/

Groxx• 15 years ago

That is an awesome poster. Thanks for the link!

tux1968• 15 years ago

The age of pedestrians killed in accidents was surprising to me. Of course I didn't do an exhaustive scan, but everywhere I looked they were much older than I imagined they'd be. Many seniors.

spec• 15 years ago

Something very similar has been done years ago: http://www.city-data.com/accidents/acc-Chicago-Illinois.html. Per-city mapping using Google Maps with additional info and Google street map when clicking on each marker.

wavephorm2• 15 years ago

I am never driving again.

ry0ohki• 15 years ago

I'd love to see a similar map of airplane fatalities for those that are scared of flying for a reassuring comparison...

RobSpectre• 15 years ago

A lot of loved ones on this map.

JshWright• 15 years ago

I find this a little... disquieting... I know the story behind a dozen or so of these little icons. Like any traumatic event, they'll come to mind from time to time (some are more memorable than others, for some reason). Being reminded of all of them at once is actually a little overwhelming.

It's also a bit of a disconnect seeing the chaos and trauma of some of those scenes reduced to a tiny graphic.

vishaldpatel• 15 years ago

It seems that walking is more dangerous than driving in San Francisco.

forgottenpaswrd• 15 years ago

I saw the death of a motorist. We were on the mountains, he was at more than 120mph in the straight part of the road(he passed over us), and as he took a curve super fast, a van appeared on the other side of the road. Instant dead, looking at him was the most horrible vision in my life. His friends(also riders) will came later and cry.

It is strange, three people I knew from my college died on a very small motorcycle with a very small curb on the road(two young girls and one boy, no helmet). I could not believe it, it made no sense for three people to die on such a small danger(I have seen MBT riders so much times do things x10000 more dangerous).

Four young men and women from my village also died as they return from a Spanish fiesta on the night.

In the North of Spain and Portugal non official "rallies" are the first cause of dead on young people.

What is strange is that until looking at this map, I strangely believed those accidents were "special", but it seems there are not.

motters• 15 years ago

Is there anything like this for the UK?

jake_weston• 15 years ago

Yes, exactly like this: http://map.itoworld.com/road-casualties-uk

US Road Fatalities 2001-09 mapped with OpenStreetMap

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