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Interactive map highlights a decade of cyclist and pedestrian casualties in LondonLondon Cyclist and Pedestrian Casualty Map (source- ITO World for See Me Save Me)

Interactive map highlights a decade of cyclist and pedestrian casualties in London

Visualization produced by data mapping specialists ITO World for See Me Save Me
by Simon_MacMichael
Thu, Apr 12, 2012 12:06
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See Me Save Me, the road safety campaign founded by the family of Eilidh Cairns, the cyclist killed by a lorry as she rode to work through London’s Notting Hill three years ago, has teamed up with data mapping specialists ITO World to produce a map of cyclist and pedestrian casualties in the capital between 2000 and 2010.

Last year, ITO produced an interactive map that showed road casualty statistics across Britain during the same period. Like that map, the one produced for London is based on the Department for Transport’s Stats 19 road traffic casualty database, and shows the age and gender of the victim as well as the severity of the incident.

For the first time, the London map also distinguishes between the size of the vehicles involved, with those with a gross combination mass of over 3.5 tonnes – which includes medium and large goods vehicles – shown in darker shades than those involving smaller vehicles.

As with the previous map, the data presented should not be used to identify individuals involved in any of the incidents.

One striking feature of the map is the higher prevalence of fatalities and serious injuries among cyclists compared to pedestrians in many parts of Inner and Central London and in particular in and around the City of London and bordering boroughs such as Islington, Camden and Southwark.

When it was revealed earlier this year recently that there had not been a single cyclist fatality in Paris during 2011, the point was made by some that data from the French capital were not directly comparable to those for London, since they only covered a small, central zone; the map shows clearly, however, that it is in such a narrow-defined area that many of the cyclists who died in London over the first decade of the millennium lost their lives.

See Me Save Me
London
ITO World
Data visualization
Simon MacMichael

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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9 comments

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skippy | 12 years ago
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@dullard , the only balance required is that which you need whilst riding the bike !
The map can be put to so many uses , whereas reading the paperwork it is based on , would be so boring that 99% would miss any nfo that has relevance to improving " road safety " !
Wish this info had been available years ago , and then there would be fewer regretting their experiences .

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dullard | 12 years ago
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Fair point, step-hent, but I was more after what the campaign was claiming for the data. The website is unswervingly negative. The take away is 'a lorry will probably kill you'. Bit of balance required.

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dullard | 12 years ago
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@Denzil

Don't be such an arse - it wasn't a facetious question. Simon's article, though up to his usual excellent standards (again, not being facetious), didn't go into whether the map was for background information, for practical use on planning journeys or to scare people off the road. Blankly, it's a bit of a shock horror tableau with huge concentration on tragedy, loss, blame and finger pointing and, for my money, light on the positives of cycling and, critically, how to keep yourself safe on a bike. It's a little ironic calling itself 'see me save me' that there's no advice on the site on how to cycle better, particularly common-sense basics like putting LIGHTS on your bike WHEN IT'S DARK. I rode home from work yesterday evening at 8.30 (so DARK) in central London and in the space of only six miles, less than 50% of other cyclists didn't have lights on their bikes. And if they get knocked off, the cycling community will default into hand-wringing. Report bad driving, certainly, but there's no excuse for bad cycling either.

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step-hent replied to dullard | 12 years ago
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dullard wrote:

@Denzil

Don't be such an arse - it wasn't a facetious question. Simon's article, though up to his usual excellent standards (again, not being facetious), didn't go into whether the map was for background information, for practical use on planning journeys or to scare people off the road.

Surely the whole point of information like this is that it is 'purpose-neutral' - otherwise it is just propaganda. You can choose to use it to check out your route and avoid blackspots. Or to campaign to get those blackspots improved. Or to highlight to others how safe/unsafe cycling is, depending on your point of view. It's just information, made easier to view and digest - the purpose is up to you.

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WolfieSmith | 12 years ago
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I found this useful in my local campaign to get a junction slowed in my area. Although the junction has a very low fatality and injury count for cyclists - this was mainly because it was too dangerous for cyclists to use in the first place!

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mad_scot_rider | 12 years ago
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The point of any infographic is to take data and allow for an easy spotting of changes/trends/hotspots etc. - this map does *not* achieve that goal - it is clunky and impossible to decipher unless you are interested in zooming down to a very small area local to you

National newspaper has *FAIL*

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Simon_MacMichael replied to mad_scot_rider | 12 years ago
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mad_scot_rider wrote:

The point of any infographic is to take data and allow for an easy spotting of changes/trends/hotspots etc. - this map does *not* achieve that goal - it is clunky and impossible to decipher unless you are interested in zooming down to a very small area local to you

National newspaper has *FAIL*

There's a direct example cited in the article of where it does show areas where there seem to be a particularly heavy concentration of incidents involving cyclists rather than pedestrians.

If you've ever looked at 100-odd pages of raw data compiled from police reports to try and pick out where incidents happened, what type of vehicle was involved and the severity of injury to the cyclist, this type of mapping does help make sense of the stats.

You'll get a bigger map area on the See Me Save Me site (link below), you can also hide the key... I just zoomed out on that and if you look at West London you will see for example concentrations of incidents along the main arterial routes... how is that not taking the data and doing something with it that helps decipher it?

http://www.seemesaveme.com/map/

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dullard | 12 years ago
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And the point is...?

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Denzil Dexter replied to dullard | 12 years ago
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dullard wrote:

And the point is...?

Going to be lost on you

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