Cycling, traffic safety, traffic justice, and legal topics; energy, transit and transportion economics
Early morning head-on freeway crash SR51 near Indian School. The driver known only as a 27 y.o. man from Ohio was driving a (new?) Corvette the wrong way. Police think the driver may have been impaired. Really? You don’t say. The name hasn’t been released but expect aggravated assault charges when he’s released from hospital.
Two Tempe officers hurt in wrong-way crash on SR-51 in Phoenix
Goodyear police are investigating a 9/12/2019 crash that occurred around 6:30 involving 3 cyclists transported with injuries, and a fourth who was not transported. The news-chopper footage shows a black sedan, as well as a large number of additional cyclists who were presumably riding together in a group but were not directly involved in the crash. 12news.com azcentral Continue reading “Multi-bicycle crash in Goodyear”
ADOT has released Crash Facts 2018 in the later part of June (of 2019), as usual; this year and I did not order CDs but rather accessed the raw data online sometime in July (it will in relatively rare cases be updated after this).
The graphical crash map has been NOT updated and so continues to have years 2009-2017 ; the tool used to present the map, Google fusion tables, is being discontinued end of 2019, and I need to find a replacement.
The Fatality Grid has been reconciled and contains some specifics on every bicyclist fatality in Arizona from 2009-2018, and ongoing as discovered.
ADOT has released Crash Facts 2017 in mid-year 2018 as usual; I received the database from them sometime in late August, as usual on a burned CD.
The graphical crash map has been updated and now contains 2009-2017 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 2009-2017 Continue reading “Arizona Crash Facts 2017”
[UPDATE: it seems quite possible something changed after 2020? see comment and stats]
[UPDATE: Something DEFINITELY changed as of FARS 2022; see below]
Executive Summary
Each of these has the potential to skew crash reporting statistics. Motorized bicycles have not seen wide use, but ebikes are expected to become much more common
I propose adding a few new “Body Style” definitions: 1) bicycle (well, pedalcycle), 2) motorized bicycle, 3) ebike; this would not require any changes to the Arizona Crash Forms, simply an update to the Crash Form Instruction Manual.
It is expected that ebikes will see large growth in use in the coming years; e.g, the WSJ reported: Continue reading “Motorized bicycles, Ebikes and crash reporting”
FARS is the federal database of all police-reported fatal traffic incidents in the United States. It is intended to be complete accounting; it has come to my attention there are some known missing incidents.
This tool allows anyone to easily search the FARS database by exact date for the years from the most recent available (currently 2017) back to 2010. It also allows to filter by whether or not a pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist, or anybody was involved. Continue reading “Search Traffic Crash Data”
There have been 4 bicyclists killed in Tempe traffic collisions on city streets (excludes limited-access highways) over the past 5 years [five year period 2010-2014); at the same time dozens of motorists and 14 pedestrians have been killed.
[UPDATed totals: There have been a total of 9 bicyclist traffic fatalities in the past 13 years, 2009-2021]
Skip below to #fatals for an incident-by-incident description
For the figures in this report, a 5-year time period, 2010-2014 was selected (the most recent available at the time; 2015 & 16 has since become available). Many additional crashes occur (14,000!) occur in Tempe on limited access highways; these crashes are not included.
There were 21,167 traffic crashes reported in the period, below are the number of people, by person type, involved: Continue reading “Tempe Traffic Collisions”
Tim Steller’s excellent (dare I say, stellar?) piece in the Daily Star: Enforcement drops, crashes proliferate, pedestrians die exposes the inexplicable sharp decline in traffic enforcement in the City of Tuscon by the Tuscon PD. Continue reading “Enforcement drops, crashes proliferate, people die”
[google doc spreadsheet gets updated more frequently but with statewide data only. At this moment, includes final data thru 2023, also highlights (suspected) “missing” hit and runs]
[quick update on 2021 Crash Facts data — the pattern continues, the total number of reported cyclist crashes was only 1025. Notwithstanding a historically high fatality count of 43]
[at some point, ADOT began “scrubbing” PDO. As explained in the 12th Edition of the crash from instructions, linked here, effective 8/2019 AZ law bumped up the PDO reporting threshold from $1,000 to $2,000. As can be seen easily at the spreadsheet linked at Crash Facts 2021, No-injury (and unknown injury) reports became exactly zero commencing with 2019).
In any event the PDO change would not explain all or even most of the dramatic decrease in reported non-fatal bicyclist crashes]
Continue reading “Number and Severity of Arizona bike-MV crashes”
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
With the sharp increase in traffic fatalities in 2015 (35,092 a 7.2% increase) — this is getting some extra attention, e.g. the Fastlane blog said on Aug 29, 2016: “2015 Traffic Fatalities Data Has Just Been Released: A Call to Action to Download and Analyze”. The big data news here is that PBCAT data has reappeared, and the 2014 and 2015 datasets released today both have a PBtable. PBCAT data is important because it give much more granular information about bicyclist (and pedestrian) fatalities. Continue reading “2014 and 2015 Arizona Bicyclist Fatalities”
The City of Flagstaff has put together crash data DRAFT Working Paper 4 Pedestrian and bicycle crash data. This report released in Oct 2015 geographically covers Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning Organization (FMPO) region — so the city of Flagstaff and surrounding area — for the 10-year period from 2005 to 2014. It is well documented and uses the ADOT Safety Data Mart exclusively. As such, it doesn’t add any additional data of the sort that was added by the City of Phoenix’s collision summary. E.g. The City of Phoenix summary breaks down the cyclist’s position (accurately, by reading each crash report narrative) to reveal 70% of cyclists involving in collisions were on the sidewalk just prior to the collision (either at a crosswalk, or driveway). Continue reading “Flagstaff Bike / Ped Crash Report”
Adot has released Crash Facts 2015 in early June (of 2016), as usual/expected; and I received the database from them very promptly. I have not yet updated the graphical crash map, but it still contains 2009-2014 for both MV-bike and MV-ped crashes. Continue reading “Arizona Crash Facts 2015”
There was a study published in 2007 which took FARS (for traffic fatalities) and GES (for injuries) data, and combined with NHTS (National Household Transp Survey. 2001) data to try to quantify relative risk of fatality/injury by travel mode per trip. Full text and full .pdf are both available free online: Continue reading “Crash Injury Rates by Mode of Travel”
