I recently posted about the City of Portland’s work on an exciting mapping project that combines our bike routes with an interactive, web-based map. I have also heard from many of you about your close calls with motorists.
The next step will be to integrate the close-call data with an interactive map. This map would instruct the city on where to focus their bicycle infrastructure budget, it would be a useful tool to highlight problem areas for advocacy groups and the police and it would also help cyclists choose the safest routes through the city.
To get an idea of how this “crash reporting map” might look, I just came across this nifty map reporting bike crashes in Sussex County Delaware.
New York City transportation advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives also has a cool bike crash mapping system called CrashStat that offers loads of valuable information like the top 10 crash locations and an injury/fatality trend map.
Besides being a useful tool for our community, an online bike crash map would encourage more cyclists to report incidents that currently go unreported. Stay tuned for more details and your chance to get involved with this effort.