Crash Mapping Project Highlights Severe Traffic Injury Hot Spots

A new crash mapping project from researchers at UC Berkeley reveals hot spots for traffic collisions causing severe injuries or death in Berkeley. The data from 2000 through 2008 also shows that the main cause of serious injury or death in traffic collisions in Berkeley was speeding. Around 58 percent of crashes resulting in serious injury involved a pedestrian or cyclist.

The recent launch of the Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center means free access to collision data for several counties in the Bay Area. TIMS’ maps detail the location, circumstances and level of injury for each traffic accident that resulted in severe injury or death between 2000 and 2008.

Based on the available data, Berkeley had a total of 251 serious injuries and 32 fatalities in the nine year study period. In Berkeley, as in most of the East Bay, around 20 percent of these crashes resulted in death and the three main causes were driving at an unsafe speed, driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol and “improper turning.”

Accidents that resulted in a fatality were clustered around several high traffic areas: Highway 80, University Avenue, Shattuck Avenue and the “top” of Marin and Solano Avenues. Among fatalities, 12 involved pedestrians, and more than half of those pedestrians were at fault: 50 percent of the accidents were due to pedestrian violation while 42 percent were due to violation of the pedestrian right of way.

The Safe Transportation Research and Education Center at UC Berkeley began the TIMS project in 2003 as a means of making collision data easily accessible for analysis. "This is publicy available crash data that’s always been there," said John Bigham, GIS program manager. "But how do we quantify data and map it out?"

Together with undergraduate and graduate students and visiting scholars, Bigham and his team were able to enter almost all of the crash data gathered by California Highway Patrol (CHP) into a mapping program. About 8% of the data was included in numerical tallies but could not be pictured on the map because of lack of accurate location information in the crash reports submitted to CHP, added Bigham.

Bigham has a master's degree in public health from UC Berkeley, and finds his current work to be much more rewarding than a previous stint he did in software development. "It opens up a whole new world of tools for people to use," he said of TIMS.

And coming soon, said Bigham, will be data on minor crashes.

Compared to the average for Alameda County, Berkeley has a higher rate of injury-causing traffic collisions that involve pedestrians and cyclists, at 58 percent compared to 30 percent county-wide. However, the data is not adjusted for cities with higher rates of pedestrians and cyclists overall, such as Berkeley.

The data shows that in the three East Bay counties of Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano between 2000 and 2008, there were an average of 910 injury-causing traffic crashes per year, or 2.5 per day.

Alameda County had the highest number of injury-causing crashes, at an average of 478 per year, followed by Contra Costa County at 288 on average per year. Solano County experienced an average of 144 injury-causing traffic collisions each year.

Alameda County racked up the most crashes resulting in death or serious injury with a total of 4,310 in the nine-year data span. Of that number, 20 percent involved speeding and 19 percent involved alcohol or drugs. During the same period in Contra Costa County, 22 percent of accidents with injuries involved alcohol or drugs, and 19 percent were caused by speeding. Around 21 percent of injury-causing accidents in Solano County involved speeding, with 20 percent caused by “improper turning” and 19 percent involving driving intoxicated. The fatality rate in the three counties is highest in Solano at 27 percent, followed by Contra Costa County at 22 percent and Alameda County at 20 percent.

Alameda County had the highest rate of collisions with pedestrians at 22 percent of all injury-causing traffic crashes, and Contra Costa County experienced the most injury-causing motorcycle collisions at 17 percent.

ALAMEDA COUNTY: 2000 - 2008

TOTAL

TOTAL

 

Monica Lam contributed to this story.

Have a story about how this data was helpful? Know of a particularly dangerous or safe intersection near you? Tell us in the comments.