bike accident fatalities and google maps?

ask the county sheriff or representative for some counties keep public
statistics

In article <[email hidden]>,

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

One hazard of your mashup map is that you'll need a statistically
significant number of incidents before you can really comment on the
relative danger of various locales.

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

Quoted message said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

You'll probably get a better response in the ba.bicycles newsgroup. Somebody
might have already done a map like that on their own. You might also check
out the western wheelers email list as well; go to www.westernwheelers.org
for info.

But as you've already figured out, Sand Hill has far more than its share. We
lost a customer just a month or so ago there. In her case there was no car
involved, but typically it seems the issue with roads like Sand Hill tends
to be drivers drifting off-line and into the shoulder area, or simply mowing
them down on the onramps to 280. The scary thing is that most of those
accidents are from behind the cyclist, and it's just not clear there's much
you (as a cyclist) can do about it. I'm not a fan of bots dots & rumble
strips, but there might be roads (and especially areas around onramps) where
they'd be a good idea.

--Mike Jacoubowsky
Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReaction.com
Redwood City & Los Altos, CA USA

"damyth" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

"damyth" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

That sounds like a good idea to me. I think cyclists might avoid the most
dangerous places so they actually won't have that many fatalities, but the
places they can't avoid, the places that seem safe but aren't, those should
show up. There might even be something that can be done to fix them.

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

That sounds useful enough, and labor-intensive enough, to persuade
someone to give you a grant for doing it. Google has opened their
Maps database for such outside hacks, e.g. Bikely, Gmap-Pedometer,
Frappr.

Chalo

Chalo said:

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

That sounds useful enough, and labor-intensive enough, to persuade
someone to give you a grant for doing it. Google has opened their
Maps database for such outside hacks, e.g. Bikely, Gmap-Pedometer,
Frappr.

Chalo

Heh, a site like bikefatalities.org, kind of like chicagocrime.org.
An effort like this would only be scalable and useful if this is a
community contributed project. A combination of a wiki + Google maps,
where anyone can add an entry on the map of verified incidents. I
haven't searched very hard, but I haven't yet found a public-editable
site that allows this. Frappr is more of a social networking site,
and only resolves to down to cities, which would be inadequate for
this purpose. As far as I know chicagocrime.org is not editable by
any random person (i.e. not everyone has write permission).

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 05:20:16 -0000, Chalo <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

That sounds useful enough, and labor-intensive enough, to persuade
someone to give you a grant for doing it. Google has opened their
Maps database for such outside hacks, e.g. Bikely, Gmap-Pedometer,
Frappr.

Chalo

Dear Chalo,

This database lets you select any county in any state, whole states,
and then see county-level maps and statistics for pedalcyclist deaths.

Here it's set to all of California, no county:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/6_CA/2006/6_CA_2006.htm

If you scroll down, it shows 141 pedalcyclist deaths in California in
2006.

Click on "pedalcyclists," and it jumps you down to a county-by-county
colored map display:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/6_CA/2006/6_CA_2006.htm#CTY_MAPS9

Obviously, some counties must be above average, others below average,
and--well, you get the idea.

Given only 141 fatalities, you'd be hard-pressed to avoid even a
county in California on the grounds that the whole county had more
than the average in bicycle fatalities.

The counties in white on the left-hand map had 0 bike fatalities in
2006.

The counties in light blue had 1-5 fatalities.

Dark blue means 6-15 fatalities for the whole county.

Green means Los An--er, 16 to 25 fatalities per county.

The right-hand map colors the counties according to deaths per 100,000
population compared to the U.S. national average.

You can also select earlier years back to 2002, but the obvious point
is that there just aren't enough bike fatalities to show much.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

hmmm. I'm thinking a FOSSET PRIZE is a good way to break the tedium,
pawsibly a new reality TV 'show'
1,000,000 for Fosset's head.

datakoll said:

hmmm. I'm thinking a FOSSET PRIZE is a good way to break the tedium,
pawsibly a new reality TV 'show'
1,000,000 for Fosset's head.

like this?

http://www.fhp.state.fl.us/traffic/

California's road system is not one of the seven wonders: point A to B
is more West Side Highway when the asylum gets out for lunch.

Quoted message said:

like this?

http://www.fhp.state.fl.us/traffic/

right! works good. if the area is known then tap Dixie to see what and
get...

http://www.fhp.state.fl.us/traffic/crs_h808.htm
tap any accident to get the Dixie map
then the solitary outback
that is a 'normal' outback fatality

WHERE'S THE ARCHIVE?

from a distance,with the satellite/hybrid, figuring riding on route
zero is possible PRIZE or no PRIZE

google images is useful

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.teresco.org/pics/signs/20020413/warning.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.teresco.org/pics/signs/&h=480&w=640&sz=51&hl=en&start=4&sig2=K8P_mNNE9vuK4EDayoX9nA&um=1&tbnid=atJ9B00_U58KdM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=137&ei=qDP1RvLEO4uMebnEwI8O&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgrand%2Barmy%2Bof%2Bthe%2Brepublic%2Bhighway%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:*:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7GGLJ%26sa%3DN

datakoll said:

datakoll said:

hmmm. I'm thinking a FOSSET PRIZE is a good way to break the tedium,
pawsibly a new reality TV 'show'
1,000,000 for Fosset's head.

http://www.openroadjourney.com/?gclid=COnGocK5144CFQ0pgAodCAw45A

a gift from above sent into 'my (their)groups'

alt . suicide . holiday

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

This is the kind of thing the Bikeleague could be doing, but they're not
even smart enough to have a news blog with an RSS feed, and all the neato
possibilities with that. Email newsletters are *so* 12 years ago.

They're advertising for new board members.

Matt O.

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

Found via google:
http://kcbike.info/maps/crash/

And I thought we had it bad here in CA.

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

How do you know the bicyclists weren't at fault, meaning the roads are
not dangerous but dangerous riding resulted in the fatalaties?

Wayne

damyth said:

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

Found via google:
http://kcbike.info/maps/crash/

And I thought we had it bad here in CA.

Dear D,

http://kcbike.info/maps/crash/

That map shows 32 bike fatalities in 16 years from 1991 to 2007, an
average of 2 per year, in the Kansas City, Missouri, area. Wikipedia
indicates a population of 2 million for that sprawling area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_city

For 2006, that Kansas City map shows 5 bike fatalities:

http://kcbike.info/maps/crash/

For 2006, this database shows 7 bike fatalities for the whole _state_
of Missouri:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/29_MO/2006/29_MO_2006.htm

And 6 bike fatalities for the _whole_ state of Kansas in 2006:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/20_KS/2006/20_KS_2006.htm#CTY_MAPS9

Here's the pair of county-level 2006 maps for Kansas, showing that the
Kansas county on the Kansas side of the urban area (white counties at
jagged eastern border) didn't even show up in 2006--no fatalities:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/20_KS/2006/20_KS_2006.htm#CTY_MAPS9

(You can check this by clicking on the western red flags of the map
and looking at the date and state in the info balloon.)

Here's the pair of county-level 2006 maps for Missouri, showing that
the Kansas City area (green on west side of state) is in the _lower_
third of all counties for bike deaths / 100,000 population:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/29_MO/2006/29_MO_2006.htm#CTY_MAPS9

In other words, the Kansas City area is _below_ the national county
average in bike deaths per 100,000 population.

The two states that include that area had a total of 13 bike
fatalities in 2006. Missouri had 5.8 million people, Kansas 2.7
million, or 13 bike deaths among 8.5 million people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri#Demographics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas#Demographics

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Matt O'Toole said:

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

This is the kind of thing the Bikeleague could be doing, but they're not
even smart enough to have a news blog with an RSS feed, and all the neato
possibilities with that. Email newsletters are *so* 12 years ago.

They're advertising for new board members.

Matt O.

Dear Matt,

Use this database, select a state, scroll down to pedalcyclist
fatalities, note the statewide numbers, click on it, and look at the
county-level maps:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/6_CA/2006/6_CA_2006.htm#CTY_MAPS9

That's California, probably the best-represented state on RBT. The
figures and the maps show why there's so little interest in tracking
bike deaths locally. Los Angeles County, for example, had 24
pedalcyclist fatalities in 2006:

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/STSI/6_CA/2006/Counties/California_Los%20Angeles%20County_2006.HTM

That's 24 deaths in a county with 9.9 million people in 2006:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:55:41 -0400, Wayne Pein <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

damyth said:

A recent spate of bike fatalities in the local area (Sand Hill Road
near Menlo Park/SLAC, CA) has me wondering. Is there a map or
database pinpointing locations of bike fatalities? This would be
incredibly helpful for people to find out where the most dangerous
roads to ride are, a geographical representation of frequency, and
maybe help people to avoid/improve those areas.

Some of you might point out it should be "obvious" where the most
dangerous areas are, but I ride that area often, but it never occurred
to me that so many fatalities have occurred there until someone
recently pointed it out.

How do you know the bicyclists weren't at fault, meaning the roads are
not dangerous but dangerous riding resulted in the fatalaties?

Wayne

Dear Wayne,

It's often overlooked, but bicycle deaths resemble auto fatalities in
that there's often an empty bottle in the background:

"Drinking alcohol and bicycling don?t mix well, say Johns Hopkins
researchers, whose study of 466 Maryland bicyclists found that a third
of fatally injured riders had elevated blood alcohol levels at the
time of their accident. In addition, a blood alcohol concentration of
0.08 grams per deciliter ? the legal level of drunkenness in most
states ? was found to increase the rider?s risk of fatal or serious
injury by 2,000 percent. . . ."

"Alcohol may play an even greater role than indicated by this study,
the researchers said, since the group did not look at bicycle injuries
occurring at night, when 56 percent of fatal bicycling injuries and 32
percent of serious bicycling injuries occur."

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press/2001/FEBRUARY/010220.HTM

I don't recall any RBT anecdotes that involve drunk riders killing
themselves. Possibly they're all non-drinkers, like me, but there are
other plausible explanations.

Chee--

Er, that's just an expression, not a toast.

Carl Fogel