One of Mayor Tall’s stated goals is to reduce traffic fatalities in the city to zero, or as he dubbed it Vision Zero. It seems kind of unrealistic, but who are we to tell a man who sleeps so long not to dream so big? One of the best ways to accomplish this possibly outlandish goal is to get plenty of information, so to that end, the de Blasio administration has put out this fun interactive map that shows things like where the city’s slow zones, traffic calming measures and speed bumps are, but also where and how many traffic and pedestrian injuries and deaths happen. We don’t know much about street design, but we do know about idly looking up where our potential traffic death is going to happen.
The Vision Zero View map gives you plenty of interactive options to play around with when you really should be working instead, allowing you to see where the city’s speed bumps are and where they’d done their outreach to try to improve traffic safety, as well as the traffic death-beating street designs the city has implemented. We’re not city planners though, and the odds are you aren’t either, so the most interesting aspect for you will probably by the traffic injuries and deaths maps, which come in two flavors.
As seen above, there’s one map that will pinpoint as best it can where every reported traffic accident in the city happened so far this year. There’s a second map that breaks down traffic injuries or deaths by police precinct, City Council district or community district and normalizes it based on population density. The reported traffic crash map also gives you data from years past, so that you can see that with 209 traffic deaths this year, we just might do better than last year’s 291 traffic deaths. The data is updated monthly though, so we should check back at the end of November, after a weekend full of drunken turkey-stuffed driving goes down.