Fatality Grid

Link to the grid; kept as a google sheet; it is complete ADOT data through calendar year 2023 (FARS is currently up to 2022)…

As part of my ongoing efforts to monitor the most serious bicycle collisions, I keep as detailed track as possible of all cyclist fatalities in Arizona since 2009.

The Arizona Cyclist Fatality Grid. It is organized as a spreadsheet-type grid, there is a “tab” to select each year as one ‘sheet’ and one row for each incident within that sheet.

I have assigned most fatal collisions their own blog posts (see the column “Link” on the grid).

The official source of objective information is the Arizona Crash Report, see obtaining-police-reports for hints. These crash reports ultimately get rolled up into aggregated stats reporting via ALISS (at the Arizona state level), and FARS (at the federal level). FARS data is incorporated as it becomes available, currently 2020 is the most recent), FARS includes detailed “PBCAT” data (where available; beginning in 2013)  which lists more details as to crash type.

Most recent COMPLETE calendar year:

• • ADOT: 2023
  • FARS: 2022 (prelim; earlier years are from the final file)

Updates

Please send any info or updates to me, see contact/about for my email.

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Some random commentary on some years:

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2009

The 2009 Grid is now finalized.

There is a full report available: Manner and Fault in Bicyclist Traffic Fatalities: Arizona 2009

2010

2010 grid.  Upon reconciliation between my list with any of the official stats —  state of Arizona in August of 2011 (for 2010), and/or the Federal FARS 2010 dataset which was released in very late 2011 — There are three “missing” cases. That is to say, the official fatal count for bicyclists (persontype 6 and 7) is 19, and I know of three more cases in 2010:

1. 3/26 James Walley in Tucson, adot incident number 2349725
2. 7/5 Dennis McKinney also Tucson: adot incident number 2379034
3. 7/10 Bradley Scott, ADOT incident number 2377362.

In all three cases, the victim is listed as PersonType DRIVER, and their vehicle is  MOTORCYCLE_MP_MOPED (unit.BodyStyle = 125). It seems to me that if these really were motorized bicycles (as was described in news reports), and not actually mopeds, that they are mis-coded.(??) and should have been PEDALCYCLISTS. In a “normal” bicycle collision, BodyStyle is coded as a -1 (means “NOT_REPORTED”). See here for a list of all 22 collisions (6 of them fatals) categorized as Moped for 2010.

In addition to the above, there are two other bicyclist fatalities that I know about that did not involve collisions with motor vehicles on a roadway; they are noted in the grid at the bottom. One was with a train/trolley in Tucson, and the other involved a bad fall in Sedona (I have yet to try and look them up on the adot data).

2011

2011 grid. FINAL; correlated with Adot’s released data for calendar year 2011 (became available mid/late July 2012). There were 23 pedalcyclists killed in Arizona during the year. This does not count 1 (known) motorized bicyclist fatality, or 1 bicyclist who died in a collision with a train;

2012

Yearly roundup: 18 pedalcyclists were killed in Arizona during 2012; this is compared to 23 last year, and a 10-year average of 23.2 — so perhaps that is encouraging news.

2012 grid. FINAL; correlated with Adot’s released data for calendar year 2012 (became available June 10, 2013). There were 18 pedalcyclists killed in Arizona during the year. The 18 are listed on the grid, and about 6 have no names, just date/time/age/gender/location — if anyone has any further info on any of those please let me know.

This does not count 1 (known) motorized bicyclist fatality (near Tucson), or 1 Flagstaff bicyclist who died by falling non-MV related. There is also one wild story from Bullhead City that was initially reported to be a hit-and-run bike-MV fatality but turned out to have been beaten to death.

 2013

2013 grid finalized from ADOT & FARS (includes PBCAT data this year).  see more at arizona-crash-facts-2013; including more information about 3 “missing”/confused fatalities — 3/6, 3/11 and 7/29/2013 ALL in Lake Havasu City.

2014

2014 grid finalized from ADOT & FARS (includes PBCAT data this year). See more at see more at arizona-crash-facts-2014.

2015

2015 grid finalized from ADOT & FARS (includes PBCAT data this year). See more at see more at arizona-crash-facts-2015.

2016

2016 grid finalized from ADOT data August 2017. Awating FARS. See more at see more at arizona-crash-facts-2016.

2017

2017 grid was finalized with ADOT data received late August. See more at 2017-arizona-bicyclist-traffic-fatalities/

2018 and later

See grid.