Bending the Chart to Fit the Road
Mapping Collision Density Along the A1 More than 350 years ago, cartographer John Ogilby transformed the way travellers navigated Britain. His famous strip maps turned the nation's principal highways into continuous journeys on the page, allowing travellers to follow routes such as the Great North Road stage by stage across the country. Today's A1 follows much of that same historic route between London and Edinburgh. However, where Ogilby reshaped the road to suit the map, A1 Collision Density bends the chart to follow the road. This new visualization maps more than 24,000 reported traffic collisions recorded on the A1 and A1(M) between London and Edinburgh using data from the UK's STATS19 road safety database. Rather than simply plotting collision locations on a map, the data has been projected onto a reference line representing the route itself. The result is a bar chart that runs parallel to the road, with each bar corresponding directly to a specific stretch of the...
