Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Where Not to Cycle in San Francisco


If you are cycling in San Francisco you should take extra care in navigating Union Square. It is the area of the city responsible for the most traffic accidents involving bikes. There were 225 crashes involving cyclists in Union Square from 2013-2017. The next highest location for the number of bike accidents in the city was the Hayes Valley – Market St intersection, with a total of 135 bike accidents.

The Most Dangerous Areas for San Francisco Bicyclists interactive map shows where the most bike accidents occur in San Francisco. The map uses five years worth of crash data, from 2013-2017, to show the number of bike accidents at every intersection.

The map doesn't necessarily visualize the most dangerous intersections. While the map does show the total number of accidents at each intersection it is important to note that the data isn't normalized to take into account the amount of bike traffic. Therefore the map really only reveals the intersections where the most bike collisions occurred. It doesn't automatically follow that these are the most dangerous intersections for cyclists. They might simply be the intersections with the most bike traffic.

However a map of total bike accidents can still be helpful to city planners. If planners want to reduce the overall number of traffic accidents involving cyclists then this map shows where introducing safer cycling measures would have the most effect. For example along the whole of Market Street in downtown San Francisco.

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