One Thousand Car Crashes Mapped

When driving in Switzerland it is best to avoid the east entrance to the Gubrist tunnel on the Zurich bypass. According to the Swiss Crash Map the tunnel entrance is the most dangerous location in the country for car drivers, with over 200 accidents.

The Swiss Crash Map is a Google Map of all 108,640 Swiss road accidents in 2011 and 2012. The map not only helps users identify accident blackspots by location it also includes filters to explore the data by time of day, by day of the week, by severity and by the type of vehicles involved.

If you zoom in on the map you can click on individual accidents on the map to view details of the accident. An information panel also gives an overview of the total number of casualties in the current map view and a pie chart provides an overview on the percentages of male and female drivers involved in the traffic accidents. As you pan and zoom the map the panel and pie chart automatically updates the data to show the casualty total for the current view.

The map also makes good use of polygon masking to highlight Switzerland on the map and mask out the rest of the world. If you want to copy this feature you can use Geomask to define an area on a map and create your own polygon mask with the Google Maps API.