Indicators vs. Incidents

We got good coverage of yesterday’s Pedestrian Master Plan announcement.

For example, the Seattle Times went with “Seattle to add 50 blocks of new sidewalks, make Rainier Avenue safety updates.”

And they amplified it by quoting our hits on Trump’s cuts to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation.

And Feminist, Urbanist, Flâneuse Erica wrote two posts about it…

“Pedestrian Safety and Equity in the Rainier Valley” & “Indicators, Not Incidents”

The “Indicators v. Incidents” post quoted SDOT Director Scott Kubly who we assigned the nerdy, but revolutionary news about the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Analysis.

More interesting was the new safety “tool kit” Kubly said [that] the city would use to inform its safety investments in the future, a tool kit he said might be “the first of its kind in the entire country.” According to Kubly, instead of looking at “incidents”—data about accidents that have already happened—the city will focus on “indicators”—signs that an intersection is inherently dangerous, even in the absence of accident data. For example, “we have seen a fair number of crashes with left turning vehicles where they have permissive left turns”—a regular green light without a left-turn arrow—”and what we’ve found is that with those permissive left turns, we’re seeing crashes, particularly in places like Northeast 65th Street,” where several serious crashes have resulted when a driver speeding down the hill has turned left into an oncoming cyclist or pedestrian.