Map of the Week: Bike accidents

(July 11: The pedestrian and cycling accident maps worked fine on their own as embedded maps, but something about displaying them both on the same page made many browsers very unstable. They’re now linked below.)

Map: Bicycle accidents, 2008

This week, we map 1,068 bicycle accidents reported to Toronto police in 2008. The data came to us from the Toronto transportation department, which analyzes accident reports they receive from the police.

Bike accidents seem to cluster in the area west of downtown, especially on College between Spadina and maybe Dufferin, and Queen between Spadina and Ossington. Dundas, King and Bloor have fewer, though Bloor between Avenue and Bathurst has more. To the east, the Bloor cluster ends abruptly at Jarvis.

(The equivalent part of the east end, which is similar in urban design, has far fewer bike accidents, though accidents do cluster on the Danforth between Pape and Broadview.)

Bay between College and Bloor also seems to have a cluster, as do major streets in the downtown area south of Dundas and north of Adelaide or so.

Time didn’t allow an overlay showing bike lanes. (Maps can be found here and here) Informally, though, accidents seem to cluster where bike lanes aren’t, and vice versa. Exceptions seem to be the College bike lane and a stretch of the Dundas St. E. bike lane west of Pape, where there is nearly one accident per block.

110 intersections had more than one accident (the great majority with two). Here are the top nine:

7     Bay and Dundas
7     College and Crawford
5     Queen and Broadview
5     Yonge and Dundas
4     Bloor and Bathurst
4     Bloor and Keele
4     Spadina and Dundas
4     Islington and the Queensway
4     King and John

Nerd box:

The large number of points created a challenge. Our normal method of loading them into an XML file created a map which was slow to load and reload at a different zoom level, and also slow to manipulate, even in Firefox. In IE it was worse.

Our alternative, loading a KML file into Google MyMaps, failed when it refused to keep loading somewhere in the mid-hundreds. MyMaps has limits, but it’s sometimes hard to see what they are other than by trial and error.

We ended up with Geocommons, the free service that the Vancouver Sun used for its parking ticket map.

In IE, it takes anywhere from 9 to 17 seconds to load, but as far as I can tell stays loaded once that has happened. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that it uses Flash.

In any case, the look and feel of the map is different from what you may be used to seeing – let us know what you think in the comments.

The full-sized map can be seen here.

Next week, we will look at pedestrian accidents.

Comments

[Chris Wells]

The map loaded in a second or two, on an ordinary laptop running IE8.

[paul Dougles]

They problem in Toronto is really between the city and its support for TTC vs the cyclists and cars. The city keeps spending money on TTC while making it harder for cars to get around. The result is cyclists have less space, cars have less space and TTC gets the cities support.
I would like to see statistics on accidents on Toronto bike lanes and with TTC vehicles.
I have had so many close calls because of TTC I can't count. Usually on Bay St where TTC buses love to pull into the curb before they completely pass cyclists.

[RMT]

Interesting, and I suspect only a fraction of the real numbers involved. I've been hit twice by cars, once seriously enough to accordian my bike, I've been doored, but the scariest of all... pedestrians on the road. I try hard no to hit them, but I no longer swerve to avoid them. I'm not going under the wheels of a car to avoid an idiot on a cell phone walking out between cars without looking, cloaked with cell phones and immunity fields. I've been injured and so have they. I stop at lights and stop signs, I signal turns, I cycle defensively, but 20+ years on a bike downtown takes it's toll. None of this was ever a statistic on anyone's map.

[RMT]

Does anyone know how these accidents map against the dedicated cycling lanes? That might be an interesting juxtaposition. Also, now that the police have said they will start to crack down on bad cyclists (long overdue) can they equally commit cracking down on the car infractions in the cycling lanes.

[bicycle accident]

The major contributing factor to a bicycle accident is driver error on the part of another road user. Almost 90% of all serious injuries that occur in a bicycle accident happen when another driver has not seen you at a junction

[motorbike injury]

Bike riders are not only at risk of motorbike injury from other road users. Potholes caused by a lack of drainage or poorly maintained roads are hazards in themselves.

[Aliza Lewis]

Accidents are unknown and may occur at any place. But the streets are facing a number of accidents generally cycles even if there is a combination of less traffic. Mainly it is the reckless driving of the road bikers and their less importance to the public safety breaking the traffic rules and running near the foot walk are also the main reasons which I can commemorate for this mishap. Since it is not the case of 2008 or 2009 it is since happening till 2013 and will be continuing.