618 cyclists (person type 6 bicyclist, and 7 other pedalcyclist) were killed in 2010 in traffic collisions — and as noted at the link above, only collisions with motor vehicles in-transport are tracked by FARS. So for example, a bicyclist who lost control and died as a result of crashing into a tree would not be tracked here, nor would a bicyclist who strikes a parked motor vehicle.

The added information becomes a new “table” (in the parlance of databases), if you download the raw data files, it will be all found in the file PBtype.dbf

The information follows more-or-less exactly the PBcat, probably no coincidence. PBcat is the Pedestrian and Bicyclist Crash Analysis Tool, and contains among other things the bicyclists direction, and a detailed crash type (or for the complete reference, see PBcat’s manual, appendix C)

So, say you were interested in bicyclists running stop signs; you would do a query and then a univariate split and take a look at Types 142, 144, and 147; all subtypes of “Bicyclist Failed to yield — Sign-Controlled Intersection”. There were 17+41+1 = 59 such fatalities recorded.

Since this is the first and only year where these national stats are available, they are of limited usefulness — that will change over time as the dataset grows and wil become a very useful comprehensive source of understanding bicyclist (and pedestrian) traffic fatalities.

PBcat in the wild

It’s not clear to me why, but the state of North Carolina had PBcatted all their ped and bike crashes statewide for many years; leading to a very rich database of statistical information. E.g. 12,000 bike crashes covering the period 1997-2008!

In Arizona, ADOT as part of the BSAP has PBcatted 746 bike crashes in the “concentration” areas but it only covers the state-highway system. See e.g. Table 1 in working paper 3 for the full breakout of crash types.

…released 12/8/2011;  fastlane.dot.gov, at 32,885 the number is slightly higher than the early estimates which come out in the spring.

The 2010 dataset is not yet available in FARS, which is a little strange given that last year’s data was released in September (i.e. 2009 dataset available September 2010). update: the 2010 FARS data came up sometime in early December.

Final Arizona 2010 figures were released in August.

Bicyclist Fatalities

As bikinginla.wordpress.com  points out, 618 cyclist deaths in 2010 makes it the lowest overall figure in some 35 years. The Arizona figure, 19, puts it close to our 10-year average; coming off of a bad 2009 (25).

Ped Problems?

USA Today article: ”The USA is getting riskier for people on foot, and experts aren’t sure why.” Mike Sanders noted the ped issue, see comment here on the final Arizona 2010 figures.   Speed matters and need to redefine mobility – “Everyone should be familiar with the chart that shows that a pedestrian hit by a car traveling at 20 miles per hour (mph) percent survivability rate. That same collision with a car going twice as fast, 40 mph, will lower the survivability likelihood to 15 percent” (Laplante and McCann, Complete Streets: We Can Get There from Here, ITE journal, May 2008).

An rather than viewing it as a zero-sum game where motorists must lose mobility in order to make streets safer for peds; Beyond Safety in Numbers suggests that the safer streets for peds are quite likely safer streets for motorists as well.

Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2010

The early estimates come out in the spring (late march i think), here was the buzz at that time…

The media is abuzz with projections released a couple of days ago by NHTSA that 2010 traffic fatalities are at there lowest number since the Truman administration, and the closely-watch per VMT figure is the lowest ever recorded. Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2010:

A statistical projection of traffic fatalities in 2010 shows that an estimated 32,788 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. This represents a decline of about 3 percent as compared to the 33,808 fatalities that occurred in 2009…  The fatality rate for 2010 are projected to decline to the lowest on record, to 1.09 fatalities per 100 million VMT, down from 1.13 fatalities per 100 million VMT in 2009

Here are the Early Estimates for 2009, and 2008.

No “person-type” breakdowns are given, e.g. auto, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, just projected totals.

State breakdowns are not given,only “regions”. The western regions are down significantly at around 10 – 12% declines. This outfit,  zerofatalities.com , is not yet quoting Arizona’s 2010 numbers.

International Standards

While the U.S. is continuing on a good trend, international standards show there is much room for improvement, for example the U.K.’s per 100 million VMT at 0.92 (=5.7/6.2) is quite a bit better than the US, and that was the UK’s 2009 figure; the US is still playing catch-up. [see List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate ; to convert from per 1,000,000,000 kilometers to per 100,000,000 miles; divide by 6.25 (to get that number: 1/1.6 times 10. 1.6 is the number of km in a mile, and a billion is 10 times more than 100M)... someone please check my math!]. Though the number for the U.S. in the wiki article, 8.5 (= 1.37 per 100M VMT), sounds wrong (too high), for 2009 the reported figure is 1.14 per 100M VMT.

The real disparity is the per capita rate, usually expressed as fatalities per 100,000 people, the US is of course seriously higher, given the preponderance of driving here in the US. E.g. the rate in US is around THREE TIMES as deadly as the U.K. or Germany.

see this related article U.S. lagging in reducing traffic fatalities.

Regulatory Performance

Interesting figures listed in a wiki article on NHTSA compares 1979 to 2002 decreases in fatalities for us versus UK, Canada, Austraia; the US decline was 16% whereas the other 3 countries showed much larger decreases of around 50%. Why has the US lagged (prevelance of “light” trucks in us versus passenger cars is suggested)? What has happened since 2002? (should be pretty easy to round up those figures….

Tied to April being bike month in Arizona is of course a crop of media stories.

Imagine how surprised I was to read that “Arizona has the highest cycling fatality rate, based on population in the United States”. This was from an April 4, 2008 KTAR story Bike Month Focuses on Safety Issues, Laws for Drivers. There is no source for this statistic.

There are a number of weaknesses in reporting or comparing the dangerousness of something like cycling in terms of the general population — still, I happen to know off the top of my head that Arizona isn’t the highest, Florida is the perennial highest, and I doubted that statistic has changed. It turns out that Arizona is third-highest by that measure, behind Florida and Louisiana.

I had some difficulty rounding up these figures, so below for posterity are both the cycling and aggregate traffic fatalities, ranked by overall fatalities per 100M VMT (per 100Million Vehicle Miles Traveled. This is perhaps the most widely followed measure of traffic dangerousness) for 2006, the most recent year available at this writing. On this basis Arizona is the 7th most dangerous state in the nation on overall traffic fatalities. Arizona has a serious traffic fatality problem, of which cyclist fatalities are only a small part. If Arizona could improve itself to merely average, FOUR HUNDRED Arizonans per year would not die on the roadways.

For cycling, the measurement we really want to know, however, isn’t just raw per capita since much of the population doesn’t cycle on a regular basis. Unfortunately there is no accurate state-by-state bicycle usage/exposure data (e.g. the 1991 CPSC data isn’t broken down by state). It has been suggested that the weather in places like Arizona leads to significantly more cycling — and thus on a exposure rate basis is not as bad as the raw population based figure would suggest.

Florida and Louisiana’s pedalcyclist rates were, by the way, far higher than Arizona. With respect to Florida, in addition to having a very high per capita bicycling fatality rate, their pedestrian fatality rate is also high. A report on the FDOT website looks at the pedestrian safety problem and correlates it, at least partially, “to a combination of climate and seasonal variation in length of day”. The factors may (or may not?) apply to bicycling, and may or may not apply to Arizona as well.

2006 Data [source for pedalcyclist, see NHTSA DOT HS 810 802, source for VMT, see DOT HS 810 920]
(sorry about the graphic, if anybody wants the data in a spreadsheet please contact me)
…

Bike Month Focuses on Safety Issues, Laws for Drivers

April 4th, 2008 @ 8:00am
by Bob McClay/KTAR

It’s Arizona “Bike Month,” and that means a special reminder for Valley drivers.

Arizona has the highest cycling fatality rate, based on population in the United States. Twenty-nine bicycle riders died in Arizona last year.

Andy Clarke is with the League of American Bicyclists and said the 2003 death of Brad Gorman, 26, of Tucson led to one important law. He said Gorman’s family went on a mission to improve bicycle safety after Brad gorman, who used his bike to get to work, was killed by an inattentive driver.

“They were the ones who got passed in the Arizona Legislature the law that you have to give a safe passing distance of three feet or more when you pass a cyclist,” Clarke said.

Drivers do not intend to harm bicycle riders, but in most cases just are not thinking,” Clarke said.

He cited the death two years ago of experienced cyclist Bill Bliss.

“Bill was making a left turn on a highway in Colorado. he was doing everything right, following all the rules of the road — signalling, in the left lane — and a driver who was going too fast for the conditions and wasn’t paying attention hit and killed him,” Clarke said.

“That person never meant for that to happen. But, at the same time, if you’re speeding, if you’re not paying attention, if you’re inattentive, if you’ve been drinking and driving, if you’re going to fast for the conditions, if you’re simply not taking due care, I think we need to hold ourselves collectively more accountable for that.”

Clarke said all motorists should take an extra minute to look out for fellow travelers.

Clarke is joining an effort, led by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians. The Perimeter Bicycle Association of America, law enforcement agencies and community agencies also are involved.

Bike Week will be highlighted by the El Tour de Phoenix bicycle race in Phoenix on Saturday. Bikers are invited to ride 26 or 74 miles around the Valley. Short fun rides will be available for kids.

During the five-year study period “There were a total of 9,867 bicycle crashes statewide in Arizona…  crashes that occurred on state highways were extracted from the statewide data set. There were 1,089 bicycle-motor vehicle crashes reported on state highways between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2008″ (see Working Paper 1, Section 4.2).

Thus this data set accounts for a small minority of bike-MV crashes, around 11%. But Working Paper 1,  table 15 offers a useful comparison between the studied data and all statewide data. For example, we see the same suspiciously-high percentage (24 to 25%) of “other” fault ascribed to bicyclists as with other studies. As I’ve written before, the “other” fault is generally the result of a poor/improper crash investigations that tends to wrongly faults cyclists who are doing nothing illegal (see Understanding Collision Summaries) — this is statistical proof of poor-quality investigations are a statewide problem for bicyclists. This is a shortcoming of the crash reports, and not the BSAP;  in Working Paper 1, figure 20, something they call “primary contributing factor” by crash group is assigned overwhelmingly to motorists (67%), and only 24% to bicyclists.

Press coverage

There was a lengthy, front page A1,  Arizona Republic article by Sean Holstege on Sept 17, 2011 which perhaps was intended to be about the plan but did wander, understandably, to general topics. For example they make great hay out of the per capital fatality stats, without any discussion of how to interpret them — e.g. how weather probably affects them, with Arizona being more of a year-round cycling state; or a higher per capita usage, e.g. Arizona has significantly higher (than US) percentage of commuters (according to census figures, see Working Paper 1, Table 1 — Arizona is 0.9% versus 0.5% nationwide).

The story, as many “bicycle safety” stories do, lacks context of traffic in general. So, for example, there was a chart of the number of bike-MV collisions (about 2,000/year total). There is no mention of the fact that that represents only a tiny fraction of all MV collisions ( which ran well over 100,000/year over the study period). And though it mentions the number of fatalites, say 25 in 2008 — it never mentioned the total number of traffic fatalities (it runs around, and lately something under, 1,000 per year).

So here are some hard numbers, over the five year period 2004 – 2008 there were 681,466 MV crashes, of which 9,730 were bike-MV — a little less than 1.5% (taken from the historical overview in the 2009 Bicyclist Fatality study, which were gleaned from AZ Crash Facts — note that the numbers a slightly different in the BSAP, but I don’t know why). The number of fatalities is 4,943 total, 132 bicyclist; or 2.67% — so bicyclist fatalities were somewhat over-represented but not dramatically so.

Note that the ADOT plan by design is aimed at the small percentage of bike-MV crashes that occur on the state highway system. “The majority of bicycle crashes in Arizona (approximately 90 percent) occur on local, city, and county roadways outside of ADOT jurisdiction”

Also, by the way, the article inaccurately stated that the BSAP recommends a mandatory taillight law. That was in an earlier draft but was since removed — I don’t believe there is adequate evidence to support the additional burden on cyclists. The article does correctly mention that the BSAP recommends state-level sidewalk law clarifications, which seem like a worthy endeavor, given the huge proportion of sidewalk-related collisions, along with the current legal murky morass that currently exists when cyclists who cycle on the sidewalk subsequently collide with vehicles in crosswalks and driveways.

—

See more about Media Bias in bicycling safety stories.

Highlights are the total number of fatalities continued to fall; there were a total of 762 persons killed in 2010, a 5% decrease from the year before.

There were 19 bicyclists killed on Arizona’s road in collisions with motor vehicles in 2010, which compares favorably with the 25 killed in 2009. That means there are two (possibly three) missing from this tally for 2010.

The MOST COMMON DRIVER VIOLATION is (remains) Speed too fast for condition

There were 106,177 crashes in total, of which 1,914 were bike-MV crashes.

Dangerous by Design

While we’re on the subject, t4america.org released the latest version of their recurring report Dangerous By Design 2011; where metro-Phoenix has a recurring, starring role as a particularly dangerous place for pedestrians — the 8th worst rate in the US. The only places significantly higher are basically several (!) metro areas in Florida.

Bad for pedestrians tends to translate into bad for motorists and bicyclists, as well — in other words, we’re all in this together.  Arizona’s motorist fatality ”VMT rate  is over twice as deadly as Massachusett’s. The disparity in per capita rate, since Arizonans drive more miles, is even worse…. more”

But you are not likely to hear anything about how or if or why Arizona isn’t closing the gap; or even that a gap exists! — rather that deaths overall have merely fallen. Here is a typical new-release-style story: azfamily.com story

Back to the DbyD report, they have this concept called PDI, the Pedestrian Danger Index; Phoenix-metro at 132 is many times worse than, for example, Boston-metro at 21.6.

And just to throw out a factoid, for the year 2009 (the most recent year for which detailed stats are available) there were more bicyclists killed within the City of Phoenix (9) than were killed in the entire state of Massachusetts(6).

The population of Phoenix is 1.5M versus State of Massachusetts having 6.5M…. The C.O.P., accused rightly as being an enormous-sprawling place covers 516 square miles, the state of Massachusetts 7,840 square miles of land area.

John Allen’s blog reflecting upon the fact that in the DbyD report, the Boston-metro area came in dead last (SAFEST!) of all large metro areas in US — “Strange, isn’t it — the Boston area has repeatedly been derogated as supposedly having the nation’s craziest drivers”.

Arizona’s Rural Highway Traffic Safety Problem

A couple of days after the data was released, and somewhat to my chagrin, the arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/09/02/20110902arizona-deadly-rural-roads.html did a fairly long and detailed piece on what ADOT is doing to identify and address rural highway problems… though, interestingly, the latest Crash Facts shows a steeper decline in rural as opposed to urban fatalities.

So far, no one that I know of, has said or suggested that Arizona’s high rate of rural fatalities is what accounts for Arizona’s overall high traffic fatality rate. Perhaps that is so?

As mentioned in the article, rural fatal crashes tend to be single-vehicle — though that is a little misleading because a bike-MV, or ped-MV crash is defined as a single-vehicle.

Here are the number of fatal crashes split by urban/rural for 2009 and 2010:

Peds fatal crashes, total/urban/rural: 156 / 102 / 54 ( 2009: 121 / 77 / 44)

cyclists killed, total/urban/rural:         19 / 17/ 2 ( 2009: 25 / 17 / 8 )

(all inclusive) Number of fatal crashes, total / urban / rural: 698 / 354 / 344 (2009: 709 / 299/ 410)

…

Here is some discussion of the 2010 National results: early-estimate-of-motor-vehicle-traffic-fatalities%C2%A0in%C2%A02010/

So, the latest is Dying in a Crash, Vol 46, No. 5, June 2011. It covers 2005-08 model year passenger vehicles during calendar years 2006-09. It also specifically only covers driver fatality rates.

The big news is that SUVs, which long have had higher death rates than passenger cars — due to the much higher rollover deaths — have become safer, due presumably to the prevalance of ESC (electronic stability control) in newer model SUVs.

There is no accounting for attempt to account for danger imposed on others.

What the WSJ Thinks

The WSJ has been running the same editorial and op-eds for as long as there’s been a CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Econonmy, probably 30 years old now), the same sort of opinion; which is there is this supposedly direct-line relationship between CAFE and death. Now, I don’t like CAFE as much as the next guy but there is way more to the story than the likes of Sam Kazen of the CEI and the WSJ editorial board lets on.  In today’s example: Why Your New Car Doesn’t Have a Spare Tire:Auto makers comply with fuel economy mandates by making cars lighter and more dangerous. Kazman for example fails to point out the part about how SUVs formerly (as of the last report!) were more dangerous than comparable (i.e. lighter) cars (the roll over bit); he fails to point out the most dangerous model, the Nissan 350z has the curb weight of a mid-size car(~3,500 pounds), yet is something like 3x as dangerous. In other words there is far more going on than just the weight; it has a lot to do with how, and who, is driving a particular model.

A couple of other unexplainable details: the fatality rate in the US has been crashing, breaking historical records on the low side, over the past few years — this is true even for the fatality rate per mile driven (a partial explanation for this recent trend is the slowing economy; which generally will cause fewer miles to be driven. Thus one would expect the number of fatalites to decline as a natural result, but not the rate)

see here for links to federal data 2005 – 2010; the per VMT rate has fallen some 30% in just 5 years! The VMT rate has dropped precipitously since the pre-CAFE 1970′s (it declined e.g. from 4 in 1970 to around 1 in 2010; a 75% decline), when cars were on average far heavier.

By international standards of other industrialized countries, the US, despite declines, has high fatality rates — in virtually all these countries, the cars are significantly lighter (the lightness due, presumably, to much more expensive fuel prices).

Traffic records for all bicyclist fatalities occurring in Arizona during the year 2009 were categorized and listed according to manner of collision and assignment of fault. Primary results are that 11 of 25 fatalities (44%) were determined to be the fault of the cyclist; while 14 of 25 (56%) were the fault of a motor vehicle driver. The most common manner of collision is when a driver strikes a cyclist from behind.

Full Report

The full report is available in pdf format:
Manner and Fault in Bicyclist Traffic Fatalities: Arizona 2009
Supporting data: 2009CyclistFatals.xls

Comments or questions may be left here, or contact me.

There were some somewhat out-of-context statements about my report on the npr.org health blog. They probably should have mentioned that the report covers only FATAL bike-MV collisions (a tiny fraction of all bike-MV collisions), and that the manner of collision in fatals varies significantly from non-fatals.

Background References

City of Mesa has various crash analysis reports available. For example in the 2007 Bicycle crash analysis found that of the 231 bike-vehicle crashes, the cyclist was most at fault in 57% (131 crashes), and the driver in 43% (100 crashes).

The percentage of fault attributed to cyclists is very likely to be overstated because in many of the cyclist most at fault cases, the reason was suspicious; e.g. in 40 cases the cyclist was most at fault for “Other”, while only 8 drivers were faulted for “Other”. Faults such as Other, Unknown, and Inattention (when used as primary or the only fault) are prone to be used in cases where the investigator has for unstated reasons (bias?) decided one party is  guilty, but are violating no laws. The report tries to explain the high-other as follows:

“Other violation. A review of PARs seemd to indicate that this was a catch-all classification. If there appeared to be a question as to which operator was at fault, this violation was identified and attributed to the pedalcyclist 17.3% of the time”

Previous analysis found an even higher suspicious use of “Other” fault. In 2005, the report found cyclists most at fault 68% of the time. Unsurprisingly, there were an outsized number of  “Other” faults against the cyclist; 60, versus only 10 for drivers.

It should be pointed out that the concept of most at fault prior to the 8th Edition (October 2008) of the Crash Manual was considered preferred, but not mandatory to code Traffic Unit #1 as most at fault. (see here for links to both the 7th and 8th editions), nonetheless the City of Mesa report use Unit #1 to claim to establish fault. So perhaps there is a disconnect between the police (who do the investigations) and the traffic analysis people who crunch the numbers. And also, since the number of other is going down over time, perhaps the police are taking the investigations more seriously, which is a positive sign.

—

This conference paper may be of interest: Schramm, Amy J. and Rakotonirainy, Andry and Haworth, Narelle L. (2008) How much does disregard of road rules contribute to bicycle-vehicle collisions? full text .pdf.

“The analysis would suggest that it is usually driver behaviour that contributes to bicycle vehicle collisions, with the motor vehicle being the at fault unit in nearly two thirds of reported crashes. This trend is even more noticeable in bicycle-vehicle collisions where the cyclist is of driving age. Traffic violations were reported in over two thirds of bicycle-vehicle collisions. In crashes where traffic violations were found to have occurred, vehicles were more likely to have broken the road rules. This is in contrast to the popularly held opinion that cyclists’ failure to adhere to road rules results in crashes”

—

This published paper examined 6774 bicycle crashes occurring in Queensland, Austrailia and found “cyclists were deemed to be at fault in 44.4% of the incidents”. Coincidentally, 44% is the percentage of cyclists at fault in 2009 fatal collisions in Arizona.

And when only bicyclist-MV crashes were considered, “The analyses reported here showed that the motor vehicle was at fault in 65.6% of bicycle motor vehicle crashes with traffic violations recorded against 85.4% of these drivers. This contrasts sharply with the media articles and surveys portraying cyclists as risk-takers who disobey traffic regulations.” I wonder if the 65.6 figure is a type-o, because in the body of the paper in the section on bicycle-MV crashes it says “The bicyclist was deemed the at-fault vehicle in 2809 instances (44.4%)” which would seem to me to leave 55.6% drivers at fault, and not 65.6.

Schramm, Amy J. and Rakotonirainy, Andry and Haworth, Narelle L. (2010)
The role of traffic violations in police-reported bicycle crashes in Queensland. Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety, 21(3). pp. 61-67.

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Should State DOTs Prefer Bicycle Lanes or Wide Curb Lanes? A.L. Dennison, 2008 [.pdf] This report was produced for ADOT in cooperation with US DOT/Federal Highway Authority.

Bicycle facility advocates have long debated the respective merits of bicycle lanes (BLs) and wide curb lanes (WCLs); this report investigates their claims… This study found no apparent relationship between fatal bicycle/motor vehicle collisions and type of bike facility… A significant handicap to any analysis of bicycle travel or safety is the paucity of reliable data.

Of great interest to me was the categorization of bicyclist fatalities over a four year (2003-2006) period, based on police reports. Somehow I missed this report entirely even as I echoed its complains about the “paucity of reliable data” for cyclist/traffic collisions while researching Manner and Fault in Bicyclist Traffic Fatalities: Arizona 2009.

According to my (from ADOT’s Arizona Crash Facts) records there were 15, 27, 35, 30 fatals in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. This totals 107, but the report says that “We obtained 85 (97%) of 88 microfilmed fatal bicyclist/motorist crash reports submitted to AzDOT by police agencies in Arizona between 2003-2006″. The missing 3 (88-85) are explained in a footnote. But one wonders, where are the other 19? (=107 – 88). Does that mean that not all fatalities are submitted to ADOT? … so the answer i am told is that it covers the time period 17-Oct-2003 to 25-Sept-2006, which makes sense.

And Arizona is even worse than US averages. For contrast, see what we’ve done with photo-enforcement in Arizona.

The large improvements in particular in US in the past few years are likely simply the result of poor economic conditions (no job means no job to drive to; and no money to spend driving around) — and not of some sort of systemic shift.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States is lagging behind nearly every other high-income country in reducing annual traffic fatalities, said a report released Tuesday by a federal research panel.

There’s some good news: U.S. traffic fatalities fell 9.7 percent in 2009 to 33,808, the lowest number since 1950. In 2008, an estimated 37,423 people died on the highways, a decline of 9.3 percent from the previous year.

But dramatic declines in traffic fatalities in the U.S. over the last several years are likely due to a sour economy in which people drive less, rather than lasting changes in behavior, the report suggests. As the economy improves, researchers said, fatalities are likely to rebound.

“The experience of the past three years is not grounds for concluding that sustainable progress has been made on traffic safety,” the report said.

In the 1970s, the U.S. fatality rate was the lowest in the world. But because safety efforts have improved more slowly in the United States than elsewhere, most high-income countries have now matched or gone below the U.S. rate, said the report by the Transportation Research Board.

Countries with comparable living standards where fatality rates per mile of travel were substantially higher than in the United States 15 years ago are now below the U.S. rate, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France and the United Kingdom.

“The United States can no longer claim to rank highly in road safety by world standards,” the report said.

From 1995 to 2009, fatalities dropped 52 percent in France, 38 percent in the United Kingdom, 25 percent in Australia, and 50 percent in 15 high-income countries for which long-term fatality and traffic data are available, the report said. But they dropped only 19 percent in the U.S.

The dramatic declines in fatalities in other nations have been achieved in part through the kinds of programs that have sometimes generated opposition in the U.S: speed cameras and speed measuring devices, sobriety checkpoints and mandatory motorcycle helmets, for example.

If such programs were widely adopted in the U.S., it’s probable that thousands of lives could be saved each year, the report said.

Researchers estimated that nationwide, sustained and frequent use of checkpoints to detect drunk drivers could save 1,500 to 3,000 lives annually.

Systematic speed control programs applied nationwide could save another 1,000 to 2,000 lives, the report said.If every state required all motorcyclists wear helmets, about 450 deaths a year could be avoided, the report said. Increasing the rate of seat belt use just 5 percent – from the present 85 percent to 90 percent – would save about 1,200 lives.

“Where is the public outcry against these preventable deaths?” said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman.

“Americans should strive for zero fatalities on the road. We should be leading, rather than following the international community when it comes to roadway design and safety measures,” Hersman said. “But it is a sad fact that the U.S. is in their rear view mirror and falling further behind the rest of the world when it comes to highway safety.”

Clinton Oster, an environment and public policy professor at the University of Indiana-Bloomington and chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said there was no “silver bullet” program that stood out.

Rather, transportation safety authorities in other countries that have been successful at reducing fatalities by taking a different overall approach, with an emphasis on demonstrating and documenting programs that work and then aggressively making their case for those programs with political leaders and the public, he said.

“I think we need to be much more systematic in developing clear goals, measuring results and making that information public,” Oster said. Other countries “work very hard to demonstrate these techniques actually do save lives.”

The report reference in the AP story is associated with the TRB but I can’t find it on their website.

See Manner and Fault in Bicyclist Traffic Fatalities: Arizona 2009

In other rantings, Arizona Crash Reports are still, erroneously, often referred to as Arizona Traffic Accident Reports (thus the acronym TAR). In any event these reports are key to ALISS and accurate statistical reporting.

Most cyclists have a keen interest in establishing fault in collisions; some thinking that the cyclist-victim is rarely at fault, others having exactly the opposite view. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.

What I really want to see is that collisions be investigated and reported thoroughly and that any appropriate charges or citations be brought against any negligent driver. (by either convention, practicality, or law: deceased people are not cited, regardless of fault)

Some cyclists have a belief there is a systemic bias against cyclists. I believe that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” and that transparency is key. To that end the only way is to look at each incident and make it available to any interested parties for scrutiny. As we shall see, the overall “quality” of reports varies dramatically; to the extent that certain law enforcement agencies routinely turn out poor quality reports one could make the case that that agency may have a bias, or is simply inept or in need of better procedures.

Reports are public records, and i would be happy to share them with anyone provided it is on a non-commercial basis (see below for Arizona Public records laws) — contact me for info.

Scanning

Best result was to scan 300dpi b/w document (1 bit) to tif file using my old (u1220) scanner. Each page image is about 1MB. Then used Acrobat pro 9 to assemble into a single pdf file; then run OCR with settings to make the smallest file. The ocr also straightens (and sometimes messes up graphics pages). The end result is around 2MByte for a 50 page report.

Obtaining

Crash reports are public records, and anyone is entitled to view and/or obtain copies of public records pursuant to §39-121, 121.01, 121.02 and 121.03). For non-commercial purposes (as here, traffic safety research), rates for copies vary by jurisdiction, as little as $5 per report. Many charge $0.25/page,  and postage. Reports tend to be about 50 pages. Un-involved persons are specifically prohibited from requesting or viewing crash reports, but only if their purpose is to solicit business, see  §28-667.

Victims (or the family) of certain crimes are entitled to one free copy of the completed report (§39-127).

Although many jurisdictions have online availability, as a general rule, reports involving fatalities are not available online. Usually a phone call to the jurisdiction is required; commonly, the records department person can look up the case  number, and number of pages for any given report.

Requests can then be sent (usually mailed, along with a fee) to the jurisdiction.

Cost of records

Our friends at the Arizona Republic continue to do important work on the public records front:

It can cost anywhere from 10 cents to $1 a page to copy a public record at Valley cities, police departments and other agencies.

The total cost is small when someone wants only a handful of copies. But if hundreds of pages are requested – and many agency reports can run that length – the cost can easily climb into hundreds of dollars.

Increasingly, Republic reporters are using portable scanners to copy large sets of public documents. The scanners load the images into a laptop computer.

Initially, journalists ran into resistance.

Last year, Arizona State University told a reporter she would have to pay 20 cents per page for using the newspaper’s scanner to copy a few hundred documents. She maintained that there should be no charge because using the scanner was equivalent to inspection of the public records and the university would incur no appreciable costs.

The state Public Records Law provides that “public records and other matters in the custody of any officer shall be open to inspection by any person at all times during office hours.”

Days later, ASU reversed its position and allowed copies to be scanned for free by the reporter.

Months later, Maricopa County also permitted a Republic reporter to spend two days making hundreds of copies without charge.

As technological advances continue to miniaturize copying and photographic devices, journalists and members of the public will find it easier to obtain copies of records at little or no cost.

City of Phoenix

The city of Phoenix is, as of this writing, hand-down, the most progressive city in Arizona for making traffic reports available inexpensively (free) and timely (instantly, online). You must know or obtain the incident number and a last name of any of the involved parties. vist: phoenix.gov (which redirects here… and for completeness, the old link was in the  ci.phoenix.az.us) 602-534-1127. They are located just west of the airport.

The incident number is a nine-digit number, that looks like it begins with a two-digit year; followed by 7 digits. When searching i had some difficulties with the last name being lower case; sometimes it worked but other times not, all upper-case seems to always work.

The full Arizona Crash Report is then instantly downloadable. Copies of the “DR” (Departmental Report?), which would be only for more serious crashes, are available at 15 cents/page. Most things can be dealt with through fax or even email(!), i forgot to ask what forms of payment are acceptable.

Congratulations to the City of Phoenix, they are a model of efficiency and transparency in government.

I do have some minor gripes: their site insists on referring to “accident” reports; this is now (since at least 1/1/2009) officially incorrect. The term is “crash”, as in Arizona Crash Report.  See NHTSA campaign “Crashes are not Accidents“.

City of Tempe

I’ve not gotten any from them, but it looks like a relatively hard pull Tempe Police Records — “written” requests (no fax, no email) only, it’s not clear if checks are an acceptable form of payment (the form says “verifiable check”; what is a verifiable check? There doesn’t appear to be any online access.  The stated cost is $5 for up to 20 pages, and 25 cents per page over. It’s not clear if there is a fee for mailing.

City of Mesa

Overall experience was very good. Reports are inexpensive; I obtained two long (~50 pages each) for $5 each, and there was not a charge for mailing, though i did have to call to request they be mailed rather than picked up. Total turn time was under two weeks.

Visit the Mesa police records webpage (or here is a template ).

City of Tucson

This was very unusual. They take requests by email, promptly replied with a quote on number of pages and price (e.g. 50 pages at .25/page plus $5 postage). The will then print and mail the report along with an invoice so you can pay later.

Visit the Tucson Police Records webpage. (scroll down for email).

Pima County

This one is very difficult. You have to wonder if they are going out of their way to make it that way. As usual, fatal reports are not available online. So I called to get case number and number of pages. The person would not give me any information; I was told to send $5 (money order only) and the name/date/location of the incident. They would then find out how much it would cost, presumably more than $5, and they would somehow get back with me and I would then have to mail (another) money order for the balance, and then they would sent me the report. Phew.

Visit the Pima County Sheriff’s Record Maintenance Unit webpage.