crash data

Quicker access to the data will be helpful for urban planners and safe streets advocates.

New IDOT crash data makes it more clear than ever that we need to prioritize improving safety for vulnerable road users.

“The [current] timeline is not acceptable,” said SRAM's Randy Neufeld said. “We should be getting up-to-date data like we do with crime.”

Dozens of family and friends of Jezniah Smith came to honor the fallen cyclists with the installation of a white-painted "ghost bike" at the crash site in Humboldt Park.

Four years of data on reported dooring crashes in Chicago show a decrease from 2011, when the data started being collected by the state, to 2014, the most recent year for which crash data has been released. A dooring crash occurs when someone in a car opens their door into moving traffic without looking, resulting in a collision with a bicyclist.

Back in August, a transportation professional who asked not to be named told me the Illinois Department of Transportation had stopped fulfilling requests from nongovernmental entities for crash location data. This information is crucial for analyzing any transportation network -- for example, we often rely on crash data for Streetsblog Chicago stories. I have since heard the same complaint from other individuals.

Crash data from the Illinois Department of Transportation is important for the work we do here at Streetsblog Chicago. For example, we recently looked up statistics from IDOT’s Illinois Safety Data Mart crash database in order to investigate the Chicago Department of Transportation’s claim that they intend to close a street in Jefferson Park due to safety concerns. Although the database website has been offline for a while, Streetsblog’s Steven Vance requests the data from the state each year and uses it to update his website the Chicago Crash Browser.

In a huge front-page story Friday, the Chicago Tribune published yet another installment in its long-running vendetta against the city's photographic traffic enforcement program. Because the Trib chose to obscure key information about the severity of crashes, the story is worthless as an evaluation of the city's red light camera program.

Crash data, more so than any other regularly collected and readily reported public data sets, shine a bright light upon the most dangerous parts of our city's streets. Crash reports tell authorities who was injured, where, and under what circumstances, and the Illinois Department of Transportation collects the same information from all police departments statewide. IDOT uses these reports "for a number of vital purposes, including crash analysis, roadway engineering improvements, safety program design, and ultimately, preventing death/injury on Illinois roadways."