Roughly 40% of accidents where vehicles injured pedestrians occurred on just three roads in Framingham: Concord Street, Waverly Street and Route 9.
That's according to an analysis of Massachusetts Highway Department data from 2003 to 2005. Mass Highway received the information from the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
If my coding of the accident data is correct, the majority of pedestrian accidents with injuries occurred in an area south of the Mass Pike along or near the Rte. 126 corridor. You can see the map here. I've also done a query tool where you can see all the pedestrian accidents reported to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, even those without injuries, by street.
These stats don't necessarily mean those roadways are the town's "most dangerous." It's impossible to determine that without also knowing how many pedestrians use each roadway overall. However, it's safe to say that improving the pedestrian environment in those areas would likely have a larger than average public safety payoff.
Four pedestrians were killed during the time studied - two on Rte. 9, one on Old Connecticut Path and one on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Last year's data is not yet available from the Mass Highway Dept., and so these numbers don't include a 2006 fatality on Old Connecticut Path (or yet another fatality up the same road in Wayland). Focusing on improving pedestrian issues along Old Connectict Path would clearly also have a significant effect on walker safety.
Overall, there were a dozen accidents reported in three years involving pedestrians on Concord Street/Rte. 126., including those without injuries, and another six at an intersection near it.
Of the 52 accidents where pedestrians were injured, 10 occurred on Concord Street/Rte. 126, six on Waverly Street, five on Rte. 9 and five on Hollis Street/Rte. 126.
Also part of this post:
Map of vehicle/pedestrian accidents with injuries in Framingham, 2003 to 2005
Tool to see all vehicle/pedestrian accidents in Framingham, 2003 to 2005, query by street
Nice job of translating the data onto a mapping program. That must have taken some time.
ReplyDeleteThanks. It did indeed take some time, since I decided it would be faster just to geocode latitude/longitude by hand than to figure out how to program an automatic lookup :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing this work. What is the next step? I don't know the first thing about city planning so I have no idea what the answer would be. What do you suggest?
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping someone will examine why there were so many accidents clustered around the Rte. 126 corridor south of the Pike. I forwarded the results along to the chair of the Framingham Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee. Perhaps Town Meeting members in the affected areas will also take an interest.
ReplyDeletebig problem these days in downtown framingham is:
ReplyDelete1) Jaywalkers (no consideration for the driver; dart out in fron of you).
2) at red and yellow lights, drivers dart right thru; forget about the other guy. think some drivers should learn the "ROAD LAW".
3) drivers dart from one lane to the other, most of the time not giving directional signals; also pull out from parking area into the drive lane without giving any consideration to the guy in the driver lane.
DOES ANYONE KNOW COURTESY THESE DAYS. IT WOULD BE A BETTER WORLD. LEARN WHAT YOUR MOTHER TAUGHT YOU. AND USE IT.