This post was written by Joy Huertas, Communications Manager, with help from Akshay Malik, Transportation Analyst for the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability (OTIS).
Vision Zero is a strategy to eliminate all traffic-related deaths and severe injuries, while increasing safety, health, and mobility for all. Philadelphia is committed to reducing traffic-related deaths to zero by 2030. Detailed crash analysis supports Vision Zero by identifying high-risk locations, systemic issues and root causes of crash patterns. This analysis helps the City of Philadelphia focus resources on the High Injury Network – the 12% of the city’s streets that account for 50% of the traffic related fatalities and serious injuries.
Since 1999 , The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) has released an in-depth annual compilation of geolocated crash data involving drivers, passengers, and motor vehicles across the state to track the number of total crashes as well as crashes that kill someone or leave someone seriously injured. This detailed crash analysis is released around the months of April and May for the previous calendar year, and it informs Vision Zero’s action plan. PennDOT’s crash report from 2018 can be found through their website’s crash information tool.
This year, the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) also released information about fatal crashes in Philadelphia on Open Data Philly’s website for the first time. The information published by the two agencies – one by the statewide agency PennDOT, and one by the city’s own police – are based on the same crash data. But PPD’s data is less broad and, while updated on a rolling basis as reports are filed by police, it lacks the detailed crash analysis needed to identify systemic issues and tracking trends in crash data over time.
Getting into the ‘nitty-gritty’
PennDOT’s report is published months after the new year has begun as they must collect their information from across the state through paper forms submitted by PPD, Pennsylvania State Police and SEPTA Transit Police. Once collected, they pull detailed information from the report such as the diagram of the crash, the narrative, and other conditions that provide comprehensive information needed to address the root causes of fatal crashes such as:
- Precise crash location (longitude/latitude)
- Detailed description of all vehicles involved
- Detailed description of people involved and their location with respect to each other
- Level of severity of injury for all people involved
On the other hand, PPD’s open data only carries high level information about the crash with approximate location which is not precise or comprehensive enough for Vision Zero’s data-driven efforts. For instance, it does not include information about all people involved in a crash, except for the deceased. It also lacks information about environmental conditions and driver behavior that are critical for Vision Zero’s efforts to determine causes behind a crash.
Here is a comparison of the crash location the City uses to inform Vision Zero’s action plan versus what is included in each of the crash data releases:
LOCATION OF CRASH | PENNDOT | PPD | VISION ZERO |
Interstate H and Ramps | Yes | No | No |
Parking Lots | No | Yes | No |
Train Tracks/Stations | No | Yes | No |
City Streets (Not Highways) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Getting to Vision Zero
Every person who is killed by a crash on Philadelphia’s street is someone’s family member, coworker, friend. Every death is unacceptable. To get to Vision Zero the City of Philadelphia is committed to safe streets for everyone. For this goal, it is necessary to reveal the patterns of dangerous street conditions by looking at data over time. Trends are important because one year may not present an accurate image of all the issues of a given location. PennDOT’s 5-year trends help identify systemic issues that persist over time. With this information, the City can define the issues that need to be addressed through engineering, enforcement, evaluation, fleet management or policy changes. Therefore, trends are a reliable source of information to guide long-term Vision Zero policy and investments.