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Sunday, March 24, 2019

COB Reported Collision Data: 2017, 2018, Q1 2019


Some approximate locations for City of Bellingham, WA reported collisions for the years 2017, 2018, and Q1 2019 (3/23/2019 to date). Not all accidents are shown. Click to enlarge charts.

Introduction

There are recently significant discussions about the increases in pedestrian deaths across America (See recent new links at end of post.) . I don't have data on pedestrian death and injuries in the city of Bellingham or Whatcom County . However, Bellingham publishes a subset of  daily police activity. (For additional links, please see Appendix far below.)  Collisions are a significant number of all reported police activity. Not all collisions are necessarily reported to COB Police. When they are reported, they are categorized by one of four buckets. The data below is for the years 2017:2019 (3/23/2019) to date. I have left the rdata.table code in place. Some relevant links on highway fatalities and safety from COB,  FARS, NHTSA,  GHSA, WSTC, WSDOT are far below. Information on COB Transportation Planning is here. Information on funding for COB multimodal improvements are here. This post may not display well on a cell phone. To see the referenced blocks, try using Google maps as referenced (e.g. "3900 BLK MERIDIAN ST, Bellingham, WA").  I also recommend Google Earth Pro.

Data

There are approx 4.43 collisions reported per day for this specified reporting period:

3598(collisions)/811(days)
[1] 4.436498

The category of collisions divides as so for Offense type and year:

COB.Police[grepl("^COLLISION",Offense),.N,.(Offense)][order(-N)]
                 Offense    N
1:      COLLISION - AUTO 1959
2: COLLISION - HIT.RUN   1092
3:    COLLISION - INJURY  544
4:     COLLISION - FATAL    3

 COB.Police[grepl("^COLLISION",Offense),.N,.(Offense=substr(Offense,0,9),Year)][order(Year)]
     Offense Year    N
1: COLLISION 2017 1607
2: COLLISION 2018 1656
3: COLLISION 2019  250
4: COLLISION    85 # no reported date

Locations

The highly trafficked areas in the Bellingham, WA have high levels of collisions:

 COB.Police[grepl("^COLLISION",Offense),.N,.(Location)][order(-N)][1:10]
                   Location  N
 1:    3900 BLK MERIDIAN ST 64
 2: 1200 BLK W BAKERVIEW RD 55
 3:      800 BLK LAKEWAY DR 54
 4:    3800 BLK MERIDIAN ST 52
 5:    4400 BLK MERIDIAN ST 50
 6:    4100 BLK MERIDIAN ST 46
 7:  000 BLK BELLIS FAIR PK 44
 8:    1200 BLK E SUNSET DR 41
 9:    4000 BLK MERIDIAN ST 36
10:    1000 BLK E SUNSET DR 32

 Some approximate locations for City of Bellingham, WA reported collisions for 3900 Meridian Block (Bellis Fair offramp)  and 1200 W Bakerview Block (Fred Meyer parking lot) for the years 2017, 2018, and Q1 2019 (3/23/2019 to date). Not all accidents are shown. Click to enlarge charts.



The table below ranks by descent the top ten "Collision Locations" for the  category "COLLISION - AUTO".

 setnames(COB.Police[grepl("^COLLISION",Offense),.N,.(Offense,Location)][,dcast(.SD,Location ~ Offense,value.var="N",fun.aggregate=sum)],c("Location","AUTO","FATAL","HIT.RUN","INJURY"))[order(-AUTO)][1:10]

                    Location AUTO FATAL HIT.RUN INJURY
 1:    3900 BLK MERIDIAN ST   38     0      16     10
 2:    3800 BLK MERIDIAN ST   37     0       5     10
 3:    4000 BLK MERIDIAN ST   26     0       5      5
 4:    4100 BLK MERIDIAN ST   23     0      14      9
 5: 1200 BLK W BAKERVIEW RD   21     0      29      5
 6:    1200 BLK E SUNSET DR   19     0      19      3
 7:    4200 BLK MERIDIAN ST   19     0       5      6
 8:    1000 BLK E SUNSET DR   18     0      11      3
 9:       100 BLK SAMISH WY   17     0       2      2
10:  100 BLK W BAKERVIEW RD   17     0       2      4

 The table below ranks by descent the top ten "Collision Locations" for the category "COLLISION -  HIT.RUN".

 setnames(COB.Police[grepl("^COLLISION",Offense),.N,.(Offense,Location)][,dcast(.SD,Location ~ Offense,value.var="N",fun.aggregate=sum)],c("Location","AUTO","FATAL","HIT.RUN","INJURY"))[order(-HIT.RUN)][1:10]

                     Location AUTO FATAL HIT.RUN INJURY
 1:   000 BLK BELLIS FAIR PK    9     0      34      1
 2:       800 BLK LAKEWAY DR   17     0      31      6
 3:  1200 BLK W BAKERVIEW RD   21     0      29      5
 4:     4400 BLK MERIDIAN ST   17     0      25      8
 5: 300 BLK E BELLIS FAIR PK    2     0      22      0
 6:     1200 BLK E SUNSET DR   19     0      19      3
 7:     200 BLK W KELLOGG RD   11     0      16      0
 8:     3900 BLK MERIDIAN ST   38     0      16     10
 9:    2900 BLK SQUALICUM PK    5     0      15      1
10:     4100 BLK MERIDIAN ST   23     0      14      9

Appendix

Top 51 of 136 categories for years 2017:2019 (3/23/2019 to date) 'Offense' ranked by descent:

 COB.Police[,.N,.(Offense)][order(-N)][,data.frame(.SD)][1:51]
                              Offense    N
1                               THEFT 3906
2               TROUBLE WITH A PERSON 2772
3                  INFORMATION REPORT 2562
4             SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCE 2515
5                      WARRANT ARREST 2307
6            TRAFFIC STOP (Violation) 2075
7                    COLLISION - AUTO 1959
8       DOMESTIC DISPUTE (NO ASSAULT) 1939
9                      MENTAL PROBLEM 1843
10                      VEHICLE PROWL 1790
11         PROPERTY - FOUND/RECOVERED 1580
12                      WELFARE CHECK 1504
13                 MALICIOUS MISCHIEF 1372
14                  IMPOUND - PRIVATE 1246
15              COLLISION - HIT.RUN   1092
16                ASSIST OTHER AGENCY 1079
17                           BURGLARY 1042
18              ASSAULT - Misdemeanor  959
19                           TRESPASS  883
20           MUNICIPAL CODE VIOLATION  841
21                        SHOPLIFTING  789
22                           GRAFFITI  770
23                         CIVIL CASE  756
24                   JUVENILE RUNAWAY  702
25                     ASSIST CITIZEN  654
26                    PARKING PROBLEM  630
27           SUICIDE - Attempt/Threat  585
28                 COLLISION - INJURY  544
29         VIOLATION OF A COURT ORDER  521
30        DRUG - NARCOTICS VIOLATIONS  508
31        DRIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE  482
32               LIQUOR LAW VIOLATION  482
33                 THEFT OF A BICYCLE  439
34              ILLEGAL CAMP CLEAN UP  392
35          ILLEGAL CAMP NOTIFICATION  384
36                   JUVENILE PROBLEM  383
37               AUTO THEFT - TMVWOOP  378
38                 DISORDERLY CONDUCT  358
39                  SERVICE OF PAPERS  326
40          SITTING   LYING VIOLATION  313
41                  ABANDONED VEHICLE  307
42               NEIGHBORHOOD DISPUTE  307
43     IDENTITY THEFT - IMPERSONATION  279
44                         HARASSMENT  265
45                DEATH INVESTIGATION  248
46             FIELD INTERVIEW REPORT  248
47                    PROPERTY - LOST  244
48                       DRUNK PERSON  222
49                       EXTRA PATROL  221
50           ALARM (COMMERCIAL/OTHER)  215
51                   ASSAULT - Felony  210
...

Some links:

Some recent news  links on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety:

Some speculation on root causes and implementing safer streets for Pedestrians:

The WA State Traffic Safety Commission has a Pedestrian Safety Advisory Council with extensive recommendations on implementing traffic safety for Pedestrians. The WA State Patrol maintains an  excellent Collision Analysis Tool. Dangerous By Design is a multi-committee document sponsored by Smart Growth America. The recent GHSA Report suggests increased SUV traffic and cell phone usage but other sources have less surety.  Here are some possible factors I brainstormed for the increase in pedestrian and bicyclist accidents: 

 (1) Decreased price of gas + easy credit plus + economy equals more cars on road. 
(2) Increased opiod/legal marijuana/more local breweries equals less attentive drivers/pedestrians.
(3) Increased promotion of urban density equals more bicyclists and pedestrians on 'local roads'.
(4) Aging population with increased incidences of AD, MS, Parkinsons, Frontal Lobe Dementia, and other neurological diseases .
(5) Depressed population on ever increasing dis-inhibitory SSRI loads (e.g. anti-depressants).
(6) More impoverished and environmental conscious millennial generation eschewing bus and cars for bikes and walks. 

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