crash data

WGN TV recently reported this week that 26 bicyclist and pedestrian injuries at Addison and Western, just outside of Lane Tech High school and within view of three speed cameras, "is relatively small." Reporter Jackie Bange did not clarify just how many injured Chicagoans would be "relatively large" and thus merit a public response.

Update: IDOT updated their statistics today which now show that there were 124 fatal crashes in Chicago in 2013, not 120, as initially reported. This represents a decrease from 2012 of 7.5 percent.

Washington, DC, has the same "vision zero" goal to eliminate traffic deaths as Chicago. In this new public service announcement, DC police chief Cathy Lanier says, "High speed collisions are much more deadly than other collisions." Exactly. When you compare the severity of injuries that pedestrians suffer in speeding-related crashes to non-speeding crashes, you see what Lanier is talking about.

The recently released update to the Chicago Department of Transportation's first-ever two-year plan, the Chicago Forward Action Agenda, fails to give a status report on critical street safety metrics. The two-year update to Chicago Forward [PDF] does say a lot about what CDOT is doing to improve safety, but it doesn't provide information on traffic crashes and injuries.

This is the edited text of a speech I gave Monday night for the City of Chicago's Earth Data Celebration about the use of data in measuring sustainability performance measures in Chicago. 

I'm pleased to announce that the Chicago Crash Browser application is now open to the public. The tool, which I've been developing for almost two years, lets you look up the number of crashes where drivers struck pedestrians or cyclists at any location in Chicago. It includes crash data from 2005 to 2011. The purpose of the Chicago Crash Browser is to provide planners and engineers with the info they need to analyze where street safety investments should be made, and to educate residents and elected officials about important traffic safety issues.

On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times noted the large uptick in pedestrian fatalities in 2012 compared to the three years prior. Last year, 48 pedestrians were killed by drivers in Chicago, compared to 35 in 2009, 30 in 2010, and 31 in 2011. Understanding the underlying causes is difficult: Right now, there is troublingly little information from the Chicago Police Department and the Illinois Department of Transportation about why pedestrian deaths rose last year.

A Metra Electric train crosses Yates Boulevard out of the South Shore station. Photo by Jeff Zoline.