Finding the dangerous streets in your town

SafeRoadMaps, at http://www.saferoadmaps.org/maps/index.htm, is brought to you by researchers in the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety. The site actually has two aspects; information on traffic safety laws on a state-level, and fatalities shown on street maps with additional information.

If you choose the "Safe State Maps" tab, you'll get to choose a state and several different ways to filter the accident information -- speed, driver age, whether alcohol was involved, and so on. Once you've selected your filters you'll get a map with little icons all over it denoting where fatal accidents occurred. (More about the little icons in a moment.) You'll have to do at least some filtering or you'll get so many little accident icons on a state map you won't be able to see them all. (The site has a couple of sample "safety profiles" so you can get an idea of what information is available at state level.)

For a closer look, there's Safe Street Maps. Enter an address and a radius (from half a mile to 10 miles) and you'll get a map of that area with accident icons shown on it.

What are the accident icons and what are being mapped? The site is using 2006 data from FARS -- the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. The database that's being used contains information on over 38,000 accidents. From the site: "To be included in FARS, a crash must involve a motor vehicle traveling on a traffic way customarily open to the public, and result in the death of a person (either an occupant of a vehicle or a non-motorist) within 30 days of the crash. " (You can get more information on, and overview statistics for, FARS at the US Department of Transportation Web site: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx.

A lot of information is mapped onto one little icon. I did a map search for 2619 Western Blvd Raleigh NC, which is the address for WRAL. A search for accidents within a two mile radius found four results.

When you click on an icon, you'll get information about the number of fatalities in the accident and a link for additional information. The link takes you to a new window with information about the date and time of the accident, statistics about whether speeding or alcohol was involved, and a map of the location from street view, satellite view, and a standard map view. (The map perspectives are a combination of technologies from Google and Microsoft.)

I ran checks on several addresses and was surprised at the different places where accidents popped up. And the additional mapping data on the detail pages will zero in exactly -- and sometimes uncomfortably if you drive past the area every day -- where the accident was.

In addition to the map search, the site also offers tutorial on how to find and use the available information, some videos on traffic safety, and a short link list. The maps page also has a "Traffic Fatality Videos" tab, which takes you to a Google Video search.