Arizona Crash Facts 2016

ADOT has released Crash Facts 2016 in the later part of June (of 2016), a bit later than normal; and I received the database from them sometime in July.

The graphical crash map has been updated and now contains 2009-2016 for both MV-bike and MV-ped crashes.

The Fatality Grid has been reconciled and contains some specifics on every bicyclist fatality in Arizona from 2009-2016

Broad Overview of Traffic

The overall number of MV crashes ratcheted up, and there was an alarming rise in fatalities  (unless otherwise stated, all figures are year-over-year; 2015 vs. 2016; and are as was published in Crash Facts 2015 as published) :

• number of MV crashes: 116,609 vs. 126,845  up  8.8%
• Total persons Injured: 53,555 vs. 56,636 up 5.8%
• All Fatalities: 894 vs. 962 rise of 7.6%

The numbers, once again, have risen significantly year-over-year; and have been continuing to rise since about 2013. See some more remarks at last year’s crash facts.

Bicyclist Specific

Whereas the results for cyclists last year showed unexplained sharp decreases the numbers of cyclist crashes, for the current year the numbers were fairly flat  —

• the number of bike-MV crashes:  1434 vs. 1476 .  flat
• number of cyclists injured: 1276 vs. 1350 up  5.8%
• The number of bicyclist fatalities, 31, is two more than last year. That includes one incident where two bicyclists were killed.

For a caveat on the large decline in reported Bike-MV crashes since 2014; see this article “…low-severity bike-MV crashes have decreased dramatically comparing before versus after 2014; suggesting some sort of policy change”.

Bicyclist Fatal Incidents

Fatal incidents tend to be different modality than bike-MV crashes overall, they also tend to be idiosyncratic. E.g. there were several “crossing” fatalities where a bicyclist was crossing a street mid-block like a pedestrian might.

You can find out more info about each incident by looking here at the fatal crash grid

There were an alarming number of hit-and-run fatalities — fully ONE-THIRD (10 of 30 fatal incidents) were hit and run. This is including two incidents, one investigated by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, and another by Goodyear PD that contain shockingly (confusingly) little information and appear to be terribly shoddy reports from those police departments.

I haven’t tried to tally crash types (like overtaking, right-hook, left-cross, etc). Expect FARS data, which now (since 2014) does full crash-typing on all pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities, out before the end of this year.

Non-traffic Crashes

Non-traffic crashes are those that don’t involve a “motor vehicle in transport” occurring on roads, and on roads open to public travel; and therefore aren’t listed (with the one exception as noted above) in the crash database. Therefore these can only be known through news reports or word-of-mouth. So the list is bound to be incomplete.

I know of NO such incidents in 2016; which is probably incomplete (e.g. there were four non-traffic bicyclist fatalities in 2015 that I know of).

Footnotes

The figures above were queried from the database, which is usually exactly consistent with the Arizona Crash Facts as published in June (it can vary later if Crash Facts is updated; adot does not update my database). The figures for 2016 quoted aboved all matched exactly.

The queries are all documented in bsap-data-2015.txt, which at the moment isn’t online. Here are the basic queries:

SELECT COUNT(1) FROM 2009_incident;
SELECT count(1) FROM 2009_person WHERE eInjuryStatus LIKE "FATAL%";
SELECT count(1) from 2009_person WHERE InjuryStatus BETWEEN 2 AND 4;
[1] SELECT COUNT(1) FROM 2009_incident i WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM 2009_unit u WHERE u.IncidentID=i.IncidentID AND u.eUnitType='PEDALCYCLIST');
[2][3] 
SELECT count(*) FROM 2009_person WHERE ePersonType='PEDALCYCLIST' AND eInjuryStatus='FATAL';
SELECT count(*) FROM 2009_person WHERE eInjuryStatus='FATAL';
[2.1]
SELECT count(1) from 2009_person WHERE InjuryStatus BETWEEN 2 AND 4 AND ePersonType = 'PEDALCYCLIST'; 
[4][5]
SELECT count(1) FROM 2009_incident i WHERE eInjurySeverity='FATAL' AND EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM 2009_unit u WHERE u.IncidentID=i.IncidentID AND eUnitType='PEDALCYCLIST');
SELECT count(1) FROM 2009_incident WHERE eInjurySeverity='FATAL';

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