#safestreetsmap

Don't get me wrong, this map is a great first start! While it is painful to understand that this map is a manifestation of lost lives and property, maps like this enable to turn software and data into dialogue to improve OUR STREETS.

BetaNYC's testimony to the NYC City Council is exemplified in this map.

FIRST, if you use this map as a baseline to NYC's crash map, it wouldn't be possible to get down to the actual incident.

SECOND, you wouldn't have the ability to see where on the road crashes happen.

THIRD, this data isn't provided in realtime and must be refreshed by hand.

FOURTH, the data is "licensed" and is not available to third parties nor other developers to combine into more useful systems.

Kudos to the developers and liberators. You've given NYC a base point for discussion. 

About the map.

The Swiss Crashmap is based on the accident register of the federal office for roads ASTRA. It contains all the 108'640 accidents registered by the police in 2011 and 2012 involving at least one vehicle. The data was collected by the police on the ground and anonymized by ASTRA. The overview-mode only shows the black spots. By zooming in to street-level, the details of the different accidents are revealed. The causes of the accidents are deactivated in the detail-mode for legal reasons.

Long story short, NYPD said that NYC shouldn't have a crime and crash map because the data would be confusing. When CM Dan Garodnick pushed if NYPD would improve their data collection, NYPD said that the state doesn't ask for this data so not sure if NYPD should… Eventually, CM Garodnick pushed hard and the NYPD said they would work with the City Council to improve data collection on traffic crashes. (WIN ONE!)

Then, A. Scott Faulk - Community Board Member, Juan - Transportation Alternatives - General Council, AAA - an infrequent ally of street safety advocates, the founder of chekpeds, and three BetaNYC brigade members - Nathan Storey from Ontodia, John Krauss and I presented testimony. In general, we supported the bill. More importantly, we were in support of a disaggregated, raw, geolocated, and frequently updated crime and crash data. 

The City Council members were blown away that the "tech community" was so passionate about the bill and wanted to work with us to improve the bill (WIN TWO) and spend the next four years getting the DOT and NYPD to be more data transparent (WIN THREE)!!!!!

Streetsblog wrote up a great piece on the absurdity that we find ourself in.

Additionally, Frank Hebbert wrote up a great blog post asking City Councils to not legislate user interfaces, but to free the data. 

You can read about Noel's testimony on his blog.