Analyzing Denver’s Traffic Accidents in 2016
I came across Denver’s Open Data Catalog the other day and saw that they do a somewhat decent job of keeping track of crime statistics and traffic accidents in the city. Intrigued, I decided to look at the traffic incidents so far in 2016 to see if any of my stereotypical bias of Denver-drivers hold true (i.e. that all drivers in Denver are terrible).
The Data
Denver’s Open Data Catalog bases their traffic incident data on the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which is dynamic and allows for updating post-accident. This means that the incident data that is newer tends to be not as accurate as the data that is 30+ days old.
These 18,342 incidents are in no way comprehensive as to the total number of incidents that have occurred in Denver this year. In fact, these only represent incidents that fall under the Denver police department’s criteria for completing accident reports:
The Denver Police Department completes accident reports if there is $1,000 or greater in damage, an injury or fatality or drug/alcohol involvement.
So these are not fender-benders. These are major accidents that involve injury and/or probably some extensive damage to the vehicle(s) involved.
Type of Incidents
There are 5 different types of traffic incidents that fit the DPD’s Critera, here’s a breakdown of how many have occurred thus far in 2016:
vehicular-assault: 35
vehicular-homicide: 1
traffic-accident: 12,787
traffic-accident-dui-duid: 538
traffic-accident-hit-and-run: 4,981
Only one vehicular homicide, but close to 5,000 hit-and-run incidents. So far this year, the hit-and-run ratio (27.1% of total incidents) pales in comparison to other, larger cities. The DUI accident count, on the other hand, is actually pretty high when compared to the rest of the country. This 2015 ranking puts Colorado in the top 10, so given these 2016 numbers from Denver alone, it may be reasonable to assume that drunk driving is on the rise.
Most Dangerous Neighborhoods
Stapleton has the most traffic incidents in this Denver dataset. Why is this? Well if we dive deeper in to the accidents that occur in Stapleton, we see that a 1/5th of the Stapleton accidents are occurring around the intersection of I70 and Peoria St:
I-70 is notorious for having daily traffic jams in this area, so I would argue that the intersection itself is not necessarily that dangerous, but that there are a lot of incidents that happen on I-70 and that geo-location just happens to be the closest to the interstate. The same could be said for the other congregations of incidents on I-70 that all get attributed to Stapleton.
The same analysis can be said about Baker as well, as it is also close to I-25. Five Points, however, is not near a highway and has the 3rd most incidents. When looking at Five Points it appears the more dense areas closer downtown tend to draw more accidents:
Bike Accidents
Those who live in and around the downtown area have probably experienced, or know someone whom has been hit by a vehicle while bicycling. Or, you at least have had a close-call with a car while on a bike. There have been 151 reported bicycle accidents so far in 2016… remember these are reported accident where a person was injured or there was $1,000+ worth of damage to a vehicle.
lo-and-behold, Five Points tops the list for the highest amount of bicycle-related incidents (12), with the Central Business District (CBD) coming close with 9 incidents:
Pedestrian Incidents
There are 213 Pedestrian incidents in 2016 with the lion’s share coming from the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Upon closer inspection, we can see that really it’s Colfax and Lincoln/Broadway where these pedestrian incidents occur most:
Stapleton again ranks high for the number of Pedestrian incidents, but it looks like this is largely because of the big land area of Stapleton in general. These incidents are much more concentrated closer to downtown.
Conclusion
Denver’s hit-and-run incidents are relatively low, DUI incidents are in the top 10, and bicycle/pedestrian incidents are right in the middle.
It seems to me that Five Points and more dense areas of the city are probably more prone to traffic incidents than Stapleton.
If anyone has any further analysis/questions/comments I would love to see what you come up with!
