Interactive map of US road fatalities


Fantastic map which shows the location of every death on US roads from 2001 to 2009. Go take a look then come back and tell me….

What location did you zoom in on first, and why?

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 25th, 2011 at 12:58 pm and is filed under feature, plot, stats. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 comments

  1. Alexis
    November 28, 2011 at 3:44 pm

    Hi Matt,

    I zoomed in on the San Francisco location of a hit and run which killed a friend of mine about a decade ago, and indeed, I found my friend’s death noted. Then I noticed the the cyclist deaths in that portion of San Francisco were folks older than me for the most part (I’m in my early 40s, and a cyclist), so I panned up to Portland, OR where I currently reside, and noticed that the cyclist deaths are a) more representative of young folks, and b) not happening on my commute.

    I conclude that a) we or our loved ones are often in the data, b) perhaps the older folks need to take a bit extra care on two wheels, and c) I made the right move, geographically. 😉

    Where did you zoom in first, and why?

  2. Matt Asher
    December 1, 2011 at 5:54 pm

    Tks Alexis! I zoomed in on a couple places that I had lived before, then I went to Manhattan on the suspicion that the ratio of pedestrian to passenger fatalities would be very high (since few people drive), and indeed that is is the case. Since I occasionally ride a motorcycle, I paid close attention to the relatively high number of deaths of riders compared to the number of cycles on the road versus cars.

  3. Jeff
    December 6, 2011 at 4:31 pm

    Very interesting map – obviously I went right to my old stomping grounds.

    Don’t have the entire data set, so this is obviously a small sample set to draw a conclusion on, but it looks like a lot of the fatalities (vehicles at least) are made of up the very young (16-20) or the elderly (70+). I’d hypothesize (if I could compare the entire data set to populations as a whole) that you do see certain age groups more susceptible to traffic fatalities. I’m sure pointing fingers at kids with <5 years of driving experience and more likely to engage in risky behavior is not a stretch, but I wonder if health issues (eyesight, etc.) are behind the number of fatalities among the older crowd.