To paraphrase the Talking Heads: Heaven is a place where the data’s good.

Unfortunately, Heaven is not in the tri-state area.

Coverage of last Thursday’s New York City Council transportation committee hearing on Intro 1163-2013, a bill that would create a city-wide crash map, highlighted NYPD’s ambivalence to taking a data driven approach to improve safety of all users of NYC’s roads.

According to Transportation Nation, the NYPD is concerned that:

• “the bill doesn’t define the term ‘traffic crash’ or distinguish between ‘reported’ and ‘unreported.’”
• Using the current DMV form, crash locations are recorded as occurring at an intersection (even if the crash occurred down the block).
• “A map would require the NYPD to collect information not contained in its standard DMV collision report” and
• “The bill would add “new and potentially complicated elements” to the in-the-works crime map.”

Fortunately, these concerns shouldn’t prevent the NYPD from supporting the crash map legislation. In fact, addressing some of them would make data more useful for advocates, who have testified that better data can create a safer city — and that the data the NYPD currently provides for the public is “garbage.”

TSTC has spent hundreds of hours poring over federal and state crash data for projects, including our annual Most Dangerous Roads for Walking report, pedestrian and bicyclist crash maps and fact sheets for Westchester and Albany counties and our fact sheets and maps of the most dangerous roads for bicyclists in North and South Jersey, and can attest to the need for clearly presented and comprehensive data to best understand the safety challenges facing pedestrians and cyclists in the region. Unfortunately, TSTC has found that data is often plagued with inconsistencies, gaps in information and even errors (though much less so with the federal data).

The importance of accurate crash data to affecting policy changes cannot be overstated. TSTC’s maps and crash analyses have helped create safer roadways throughout the tri-state region. In New York City, we’ve been told again and again by Council Members and Borough Presidents that it is helpful to see the locations of pedestrian fatalities as they advocate for safer streets for their constituents.

At the hearing, NYPD testified that Intro 1163-2013 would force them to gather data that it does not need. But today, with open data, the public and advocates can join the dialogue, responsibly using data provided by agencies to have a conversation with them about how to improve the quality of life of the region’s residents. In this current era of austerity, instead of fighting the release of good data, NYPD and agencies across our region should welcome the opportunity to leverage the ‘free’ intellectual capital of open data experts and work together to create a safer transportation infrastructure for a 21st century city.