We already knew that, for instance, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill have the borough’s most dangerous intersections for cyclists, but what do all those accidents look like on a map? Enter CrashStat, a handy new map thingy on which Transportation Alternatives has plotted over a decade of bicycle and pedestrian crash data for New York City.
Not surprisingly, Brooklyn’s most dangerous strips are its biggest, with major concentrations of dots and stars along Atlantic and Flatbush avenues, as well as Eastern Parkway, while the intersection of Graham and Flushing avenues looks like North Brooklyn’s worst and to the south, Brighton Beach Avenue has seen an astonishing number of pedestrian deaths for such a short stretch. The site, which currently spans 1995 to 2009, accepts user-submitted data.
Transportation Alternatives launched the site with funding from the New York State Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The group explains:
This is your roadmap in the fight for safer streets. More than 220,000 pedestrians and bicyclists have been injured and over 2,000 have died in the years of crash data displayed on CrashStat. In a city where less than half of households own cars, why do we accept this level of traffic violence? With more effective public policy—better engineering, enforcement and education—these deaths and injuries can be prevented. We believe that the City of New York should develop a comprehensive plan to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries.
An accompanying list of the city’s worst intersections borough by borough (PDF) reveals that the three most dangerous intersections in the entire city for cyclists are on the Lower East Side, near entrances to the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. No surprises there.