Kinzie Street crash story: Report them all

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Last Tuesday a friend of mine called me around 6 PM to describe that he had just witnessed a cyclist get involved in a collision with an automobile at Canal Street and Kinzie Street. From my friend’s point of view (which was a couple hundred feet west of the intersection), the cyclist was turning left from westbound Kinzie Street (after exiting the bridge) onto southbound Canal Street. The driver was traveling east on Kinzie Street.

My friend approached the scene and asked the driver to pull over and exchange information with the cyclist. The driver moved her car to Canal Street. My friend then met with the fallen cyclist and talked him through all of the steps of things to do after a crash:

  1. Call police and file a crash report
  2. Keep calm (this is probably the hardest part and I have no doubt that my friend’s presence here served to reassure the cyclist that they were not alone in this crash). This includes not talking about who might be at fault.
  3. Get witness information
  4. Preserve evidence; get information from the other parties; take pictures (my friend photographed the driver involved)
  5. Take care of yourself, get medical attention (this cyclist didn’t want it when asked by the 911 operator)

Continue reading Kinzie Street crash story: Report them all

Fatality tracker: Young woman killed by person driving on suspended license

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Photo of shops on Cottage Grove Avenue near 87th Street by Thornton29. 

2012 Chicago fatality stats*:

Pedestrian: 7 (6 have been from hit-and-run crashes)
Pedalcyclist: 3
Transit: 5

Caprice Cunningham, a 23-year-old mother of three children, was killed while riding her bike near the intersection of 87th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue in the Chatham neighborhood. Cottage Grove has two lanes in each direction, while 87th Street has a single lane in each direction. The collision happened on Thursday, July 12, 2012. “Cunningham was riding her bike east on 87th Street when she hit the front driver’s side door of a 1964 Ford truck that was northbound on Cottage Grove Avenue, [Chicago Police News Affairs Officer John] Mirabelli said.”

The family is looking for more information about how the crash occurred. From the Chicago Tribune:

While Mirabelli said that a witness provided details to police, the family said they want more witnesses to come forward.

She said she believes the busy intersection has surveillance cameras and they want police to share details of the accident with them.

“We want somebody to come foreword, we want witnesses to come forward, 87th and Cottage, that”s a busy street,” said Michelle Cunningham [relation wasn’t given].

The intersection sees about 40,000 automobiles pass through each day, according to counts conducted by the City in 2006. The intersection is outside any future, potential speed camera zone. Crash data from the Illinois Department of Transportation shows 19 pedestrian-automobile collisions and 1 bicycle-automobile collision at this intersection from 2005-2010 (all “possible injury” or greater, but no fatalities). Including all crash types, there were 307 in the same time period, with no fatalities.

The Chicago Tribune also reported the driver’s history on the road (bottom line, this person, who the police nor the newspaper haven’t identified, wasn’t allowed to be driving):

According to Illinois Secretary of State’s records, the driver [a 29-year-old woman] has a troubled driving history dating back to 2001 when she was ticketed for backing up in an area where this was not allowed.

In 2009 and again in 2010 she was ticketed for speeding. Her license was suspended in 2010 after being convicted for not having injurance and suspended again last year after she failed to get high-risk insurance as required, according to records.

The driver was cited for the following infractions:

  • Driving while license suspended or revoked
  • operating a vehicle without insurance
  • Violating restrictions on her driver’s license [the Chicago Tribune article didn’t specify what these restrictions were]
  • Driving an unsafe vehicle [the Chicago Tribune article didn’t specify what was unsafe about the vehicle]

This Google Street View image is looking east along 87th Street at the intersection with Cottage Grove Avenue, where the bicyclist collided with a northbound ice cream truck. View larger.

The Chicago Sun-Times also reported on this story. Visit Cunningham’s page on Every Bicyclist Counts.

* The information is only accurate as of this post’s publishing time and includes only people who died in the Chicago city limits. View previous Fatality Tracker posts.

Cyclists in Chicago crash less often than those in the suburbs

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This post is third in a series on crash data sponsored by Jim Freeman, a Chicago lawyer specializing in pedestrian and bicycle crashes. Read the other posts in this series

I recently came across an undated and unattributed article on an injury lawyer’s website about bike crashes. The website is designed to capture as many keyword searches about bike accidents and injuries as possible, and likely shares some its content with other injury lawyer websites around the country.

The article is titled Is bicycling in Chicago more dangerous than in surrounding Illinois counties?. Its URL gave away the publishing date as June 2012. I read the article and I decided to verify one of the claims made there:

Looking at 2010 data collected from all counties vs. Chicago, Illinois collar county bike riders were actually more likely than riders in Chicago to be involved in either fatal or incapacitating bike accident!

It’s true. At least based on the data that is collected.

Here’s some background on the kind of data that is collected: Every 10 years, the Census Bureau conducts the decennial census and asks the entire population in the United States to list the transportation mode they typically used  to get to work in the previous week for the longest distance. Every year (starting in 2005), the Census Bureau asks the same question but for a smaller portion of the population in the American Community Survey (ACS). The intention of ACS is to replace the decennial census to give researchers the same quality and breadth of data every 5 years instead of 10.

Aside from the shortcomings in the data based on that question (typical mode to work for the longest distance), it doesn’t count what modes people use to get everywhere else. The Travel Tracker Survey tells us that households in Cook County make an average of 9.1 trips per day (and the average household in Cook County has 2.6 people) – that’s 3.5 trips per day, and not all of them are to and from work.

Data that could better show the likelihood of getting into a crash is “bicycle miles traveled”. This measurement would ignore trip purpose and destination and simply tell how often people are cycling in the streets, exposed to the possibility of being involved in a crash with an automobile. Another useful measurement would be “ridership”, that is, how many people are cycling each day for any trip purpose. We’ve discussed how Chicago currently counts people riding bikes.

Without those data, though, planners rely on commuting data as a proxy for the number of people outside on a bike each day (well, each weekday). Below is verification of the claim that people outside Chicago and outside Cook County have a higher probability of being in a crash.

For every 1,000 people counted by the ACS who commuted to work by bicycle, the following number of people were involved in a crash in 2010 in which they received an incapacitating injury or died:

  • Chicago: 10.68 people
  • Cook County, including Chicago: 11.92
  • Cook County, excluding Chicago: 15.27
  • Collar counties*: 21.10

The same trend is present when looking at receiving any kind of injury from a bicycle crash with an automobile: those in Chicago are less likely to experience an injury than those in surrounding counties.

For every 1,000 people counted by the ACS who commuted to work by bicycle, the following number of people were involved in a crash in 2010 in which they received an injury:

  • Chicago: 109.96 people
  • Cook County, including Chicago: 116.12
  • Cook County, excluding Chicago: 132.73
  • Collar counties: 126.38

Download the spreadsheet I created to calculate these figures (.xls).

The spreadsheet contains other data, including density, average number of vehicles available per household (as you might guess, Chicago has the lowest number of vehicles available per household), mode share of bike commuting, and population. The low likelihood of crashing while bicycling in Chicago appears to be correlated with the city’s higher mode share of bike commuting, but also seems related to its population density and the lower number of vehicles available per household. There is safety in numbers.

* The collar counties are DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will. These are the counties in the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) research area.

N.B. All data here are estimates from a sample of the population and are subject to error margins. All demographic data is collected in the 2008-2010 3-year American Community Survey, and downloaded from either CMAP’s website (transportation modes, household size, vehicle availability), or the American FactFinder. Crash data is only from 2010, from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT).

Photo shows people cycling in Blue Island, Illinois, adjacent to the southern border of Chicago. Photo contributed to our Flickr group by Jane Healy.

Chicagoans make stop signs obsolete at Holstein Park

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Photo of the northern entrance to Holstein Park by YoChicago1. 

The stop sign has become obsolete, at least in the place where I’d expect most people want it, in front of a popular neighborhood park bustling with children.

No, those who are driving past Holstein Park aren’t stopping on their own, without the presence of a stop sign. The reverse is true: they are not stopping in the presence of a stop sign. The device is no longer used. Watch this video uploaded by “mea2214” of people driving east on Lyndale Street at Oakley Avenue (in the 32nd Ward). Here’s the Street View location.

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Watch the video on YouTube.

Continue reading Chicagoans make stop signs obsolete at Holstein Park

Bicycle crashes: A presentation at the Transport Chicago conference

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I assisted Nabil Nazha in gathering data and developing a methodology for the geographic analysis of bicycle crashes at intersections needed to complete his master’s thesis from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). I graduated from CUPPA in 2010. We submitted his paper to the Transport Chicago conference and it was accepted; see Session 1 – A Safety Dance. He was out of the country at the time of the conference so I gave this presentation alone. 

[slide 1 – intro]

From 2007 to 2010 there were 6,705 bicyclists involved in 6,664 crashes involving at least one bicycle and one automobile. A majority of bicyclists received injuries and 20 bicyclists died . Bicycle crashes at intersections are the topic of the paper, Safe Cycling in Chicago. Continue reading Bicycle crashes: A presentation at the Transport Chicago conference

Calling 311 to report dangerous taxicab drivers works

Taxi driver I testified against

The taxi driven by the man who harassed me and against whom I testified in an administrative hearing.

This is the story of my being harassed by a taxi driver while cycling in downtown Chicago the day before Thanksgiving in November 2011. I was riding from Grant Park to meet my mother and sister for lunch at Xoco (449 N Clark). It’s also a set of loose instructions on curbing car culture.

The article is divided into three sections: the incident, the hearing, and the results. I am not revealing the taxi driver’s name or cab number: he’s already had his hearing and received due process; additionally, he may not always drive the same cab number. On the day of the incident, November 25, 2011, he leased his cab from the Chicago Carriage Cab Corp.

If you feel unsafe from the behaviors of a taxi driver, call 311 immediately after composing yourself and ask to file a complaint against a taxicab driver. You must have the time, location, and taxi number. If your immediate safety is threatened, call 911 first.

Incident

This is the description I submitted to the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, who regulate public chauffeurs.  Continue reading Calling 311 to report dangerous taxicab drivers works