In June, the Seattle PI put out the article “Where Seattle Walkers Get Hit”. It pulled data across 3 years to show which were the most dangerous intersections. As someone who has been hit by a car in Seattle, this article was of interest to me. However, the data was in a horrible format. Instead of having a single map, our local newspaper spread the dataset across 34 pages to drive up pageviews.
It’s not like people are getting killed..oh yeah they are.
Last week, I met some developers working for the Code For Seattle project. One of the members told me about a mapping solution call MapBox. Tonight, I rebuilt the Seattle PI article as a single map, which shows the most dangerous intersections in red, followed by orange and yellow.
UPDATE 2015: MapBox stopped working for embeds. Direct links to the map only work if you are logged in using my account. So sorry this map is no longer available. This is the price of FREE. I won’t be using them ever again.
z7
Aug 21, 2013 — 9:06 am
Awesome — data needs good presentation like this.
However, regarding the data: Is there enough data on foot traffic at intersections in Seattle to normalize the number of hits by the number of pedestrians? When I see a red pin on this map, I don’t know if that intersection is just especially well-walked, or if drivers / pedestrians are disproportionately likely to engage one another in an accident there.
Roberta
Aug 21, 2013 — 11:16 am
Okay, that’s 4 within a block of my house (intersection I cross at least 4 times per day when dog walking) I had no idea!!
Jillian
Aug 21, 2013 — 12:11 pm
1st Ave N & Roy Street is right by my place – I knew it was a tricky intersection, but interesting that there have been 5 pedestrians hit! That one stands out so much – as there aren’t any other in the neighborhood, it is obviously a design issue. Hope that Seattle does something about it…