11/29/2016
By Ivan Pereira
View every car crash in the city with the click of a mouse.
The NYPD launched its online database for traffic-related incidents, TrafficStat, Tuesday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been pushing his Vision Zero initiative to reduce pedestrian and driver deaths, said the police have used the data to tackle problems at specific locations and he hopes that New Yorkers would also use it to reduce accidents.
“We want the public to see it in real time and we want to be held accountable,” he said.
The site, https://trafficstat.nypdonline.org, which is updated every Tuesday, includes statistics on the number of citywide collisions, injuries related to motorists, pedestrians, passengers and bike riders and fatalities. The data can be viewed citywide, or broken down into police precincts and has a map that pinpoints the exact location of collisions.
The site, which was dubbed the cousin of NYPD’s CompStat crime database by Jessica Tisch, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Information and Technology, also breaks down the incidents by the days of the week, so that users can see which days have the most number of collisions.
“This was really about transparency and providing as much data we can to the public,” she said.
De Blasio and the NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said they will use the data to conduct “precision policing” in the worst locations. Extra officers will be deployed to those streets, such as Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, to watch for illegal and dangerous drivers and there will be extra checkpoints to catch drunken drivers.
“If you commit a violation, you will be pulled over and you will get a summons,” O’Neill said.
Paul Steely White, the executive director of the nonprofit group Transportation Alternatives, said TrafficStat is a first step to improving transparency but added that the city needed to improve “the veracity and access of crash data.” Specifically he pushed for MV-104 reports, which are required to be filed by motorists who cause more than $1,000 in damage during a collision, to be publicly available.
De Blasio, however, said TrafficStat would be another Vision Zero tool that would inform New Yorkers and increase safety in the long term.
“Anytime that we help the public to see where there are particular problems, we make ourself accountable in the process,” he said.
