Traffic Collision Analysis - Excel

PURPOSE OF THE REPORT

I pictured myself as an analyst working for New York City local government in Traffic Services putting together the annual summary of vehicle collisions in the five boroughs. The audience for the report is potentially various:

• POLITICIANS could assess the safety of city roads.

• THE PRESS could use this report in reporting about future accidents.

• RESIDENTS could inform themselves about city safety (in its final form the report would be publicly available).

FINDINGS OF THE REPORT

• The total and rate per 100,000 population of collisions, injury collisions and fatal collisions

• The most collisions happened in the spring and summer months (peaking in June). Afternoon rush hour was the most common time for all types of collisions. The most crashes happened on Fridays.

• The most dangerous streets tended to be expressways, contributing the most to the total of injury and fatal crashes. That trend may explain why unsafe speed contributed to an oversized share of fatal crashes.

NEXT STEPS

• This report would naturally be combined with reports from previous years to track changes in the metrics year over year. Comparing pre- and post-2020 reports might shed light on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected driving habits.

• Estimate financial impact of property damage, injury, and fatalities.

• Fill gaps in existing data (contributing factors and borough).

• Incorporate other crash data (age of drivers, other contributing factors) if available.