The Chainlink

"Willens Law Office Unveils First Real-Time Bike Accident Map"

Sacramento Bee apparently among the first to run with this press release...

 

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/31/5611430/willens-law-offices-unveil...

 

My internet is barely functional here at work at the moment so I can't check this out, but I'm interested to hear others' opinions.

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Permalink Reply by Michael A on July 31, 2013 at 4:51pm

"I was checking my iphone to see if the road I was on was in one of the hot spots for accidents when I hit a parked bus" I am going to sue this law firm

Permalink Reply by Rich S on July 31, 2013 at 4:56pm

I like the idea of the heat map but it seems to point out what we already know.  

- 6 corner intersections have many incidents

- diagonal streets have more incidents (Elston seems to be a bit lighter than some others and that only reinforces why I personally like Elston)

- lots of incidents in the north loop and river north areas - anyone who commutes around here during evening rush hour will know why

That being said what we know is qualitative for the most part. The heat map helps quantify our experiences and perceptions. If it can be used to spur action then I'm all for it and will contribute data. The less I have to contribute the better if you know what I mean.  

Permalink Reply by S on July 31, 2013 at 5:07pm

Raw information is useful but can be misleading.  Ideally the data should be normalized so that relative risk can be determined.  Having Milwaukee in red on the map because you get 100 reports in a week is one thing but that doesn't mean much if 100,000 cyclists used it in the same time period.  Not really sure if they can do this without a lot of ancillary data though.  The current map just appears to show the roads in the city that are used a lot.

Also, having a law firm doing this looks like a great way for them to develop leads for potential clients.  

Permalink Reply by Tony Adams on July 31, 2013 at 5:08pm

Seems like that vague of a heat map would correlate pretty closely to a heat map of "Where people ride bikes."

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 31, 2013 at 5:11pm

Which is still immensely useful.*

Tony Adams 7 mi said:

Seems like that vague of a heat map would correlate pretty closely to a heat map of "Where people ride bikes."

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 31, 2013 at 5:11pm

*If you're an attorney wanting to know where the best place to stand to find clients is...

Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on July 31, 2013 at 5:14pm

So I was able to take a look, and my first reaction is that the little checkbox for "I would like an attorney to contact me"  should be much, much larger.

Permalink Reply by Michael A on July 31, 2013 at 5:17pm

It also shows the only dangerous place on the lakefront path is between montrose and lawrence

Permalink Reply by Duppie on July 31, 2013 at 5:33pm

It looks like LSD is much safer than the LFT. I've putting putting myself in danger unnecessary all these years!

I shall try LSD on my way home tonight. Too bad it doesn't show which lane is safest.

Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on July 31, 2013 at 6:11pm

Mr. Willens has a very active publicist. He has appeared here, in the Tribune and in Chicago Magazine promoting Ghost Racks to replace ghost bikes, and is now commissioning a realtime bike crash map. Looks like there's a new bike accident lawyer in town.

Permalink Reply by Rich S on July 31, 2013 at 7:06pm

If you zoom out far enough it looks like it isn't safe to ride anywhere in Chicago!

I wondered where the data came from and by clicking credits it looks like Chicago Police reports are the source. The data isn't very descriptive.  Just a list of incident dates, times, and a few other factors like vehicle direction and whether a traffic control device was present. You can view the incidents on a map that has a point for each incident rather than the heat map. There are 3 reports actually submitted to the law office all from today. 



Duppie 13.5185km said:

It looks like LSD is much safer than the LFT. I've putting putting myself in danger unnecessary all these years!

I shall try LSD on my way home tonight. Too bad it doesn't show which lane is safest.

Permalink Reply by SlowCoachOnTheRoad on July 31, 2013 at 9:28pm

As someone posted earlier, the number of accidents misleads us into exaggerating the rate of danger if we don't know how many people passed by those spots without getting into accidents.  For example, what if blue was the color for any day we had NO near-misses and pink the color for every day we made it perfectly with no problems at all?  The map would be blue and pink in no time!  But of course, the real purpose of this map is to find as many legal clients as possible out of the relatively few people who do get into serious accidents each year - for they are money on wheels!

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