Random Facts from Hartford Open Data: Accidents

If you live near a fire station, chances are you hear sirens so often that you begin to have auditory hallucinations and are sometimes not entirely sure when the sirens are real or imagined. Some neighborhoods seem to experience a higher frequency of structure fires than others, but only a couple of those sirens we hear each day are for actual structure fires.

Other calls they respond to: false alarms, medical assists, gas leaks, lock outs, rescues from stalled elevators, matters requiring police, malfunctioning sprinkler systems, oil and gas spills, and motor vehicle accidents.

For the period of September 1, 2012 through September 1, 2014, there were 12,525 accident cases on file with the Hartford Police Department. A few of these were designated as “other,” but the majority were described in Open Data as involving motor vehicles. Approximately 17% of these involved injuries, though the database does not indicate severity of those injuries. There were twelve fatal accidents, one of which was labeled manslaughter. A glance at the map shows that the fatal accidents in recent years did not occur at locations with the greatest number of accidents in all, though in previous years, that had sometimes been the case.

Looking at time of year is not necessarily a predictor. During this period, the month with the greatest number of accidents was February 2014 (681 accidents), but the next highest was September 2012 (549 accidents). The lowest — July 2014 with 457. This basically averages out to 14.7-18.3 accidents per day, with that one exception being an average of 24 per day in February 2014. But that’s inaccurate — there was no real average day. There were 8 accidents on February 9, 2014, but 49 on February 15, 2014.

We do know that 120 of all accidents involved drunk driving and that intersections with multiple drunk driving accidents during this time frame include Vine and Westland, Standish and Wethersfield, Main and Windsor, Main and Morgan, and Collins and Woodland. Conventional wisdom is that drunk driving accidents happen at night, especially late. Numbers showed a trend in this way, but there were several such accidents from 5-10a.m. and in the early afternoon.

The data raises questions. If it is known that certain areas and intersections experience a high frequency of motor vehicle accidents, more than can be attributed to motorist negligence alone. What factors are contributing besides human impatience and distraction? Are lanes and direction signs posted largely and clearly? Are light cycles too long, discouraging pedestrians from waiting their turn? Are intersections so wide that motorists are not signaled to actually stop when the light is red? It’s not odd to see a high number of accidents near a shopping plaza or Interstate ramps, but why are some so much more problematic than others?