A new way to visualize traffic crashes in DC

DC’s Vision Zero initiative released a new interactive data portal last week that provides a new way to visualize crash data in the District.

The portal will “help us work with the community to identify and fix traffic crash hot spots,” the Vision Zero team said in a tweet.

None of this data is new to the public — DC already publishes crash data in its Open Data portal — but the tool provides a more user-friendly way to visualize where people are getting hurt and killed by traffic crashes.

The portal shows crashes that resulted in injuries and fatalities on a map of DC. You can isolate data by date, the severity of injury, by ward, and by ANC district.

You can toggle the map to see specific incidents plotted, or view crashes that resulted in injuries on a heat map. Data goes back to 2017 and is updated every Friday, according to the website.

The tool also allows you to see the number of injuries and deaths by mode — showing, for instance, that about five times as many drivers as pedestrians were injured in crashes in 2020, but a much higher proportion of pedestrians involved in crashes were killed.

Other initial facts from a first glance at the new tool:

• DC’s Ward 3 was the only ward that saw no crash fatalities in 2020 (one person was killed along the ward’s border on Rock Creek Parkway, however)
• More than half of bicycle and pedestrian fatalities in DC last year happened east of the Anacostia River
• Since 2017, Ward 8 has been the most deadly for pedestrians and bicyclists, with 35 deaths and 279 major injuries.
• In the last four years, more than 30,000 people have been injured or killed in traffic crashes in DC

What else do you notice using the interactive tool?