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Open Source Mapping Software Shows Every Traffic Death On Earth
cartechboy writes "Traffic deaths are set to outpace AIDS/HIV and malaria in the developing world, so the UN is trying to change that perception. This shocking open source, interactive map of crash data from the Pulitzer Center ought to help. It's grisly, but very informative. The mapping was produced by Pulitzer Center journalists using open source mapping technology from Mapbox. Compare the U.S. fatality rate of 11.4 per 100,000 to that of other nations, like the Dominican Republic, Iran, and Thailand and see how people were traveling when when killed (car, bicycle, etc)."
Where are they?
What's the point of saying the US is 11.4 per 100,000 if you don't give the stats for the other countries?
I was expecting a map pinpointing where every death occurred, instead we have a a funny interface to a list of ~30 countries with the # of death per 100k people.
Traffic deaths are set to outpace AIDS/HIV and malaria in the developing world, so the UN is trying to change that perception.
Huh? So the UN is saying there are some facts, and they want to whitewash them so we have a different "perception" of the facts? Or, perhaps they are saying there should be more AIDS/HIV deaths?
Is there any good reason that this stat is 11.4 out of 100,000 instead of 1.14 out of 10,000 or say a normal percentage?
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
This only shows the number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. There is a very different number that in many ways are more important: Number of deaths per million km (or miles) driven.
Reading MapBox's site, they stress open source a lot - their Javascript API, iOS SDK & design studio are all 'open source', and they're using OSM for the backend data. Other than a list of plans which seem very similar to other commercial offerings, I don't see any indication of which open source licenses apply here - is it one of the popular ones like GPL or BSD, or some custom version?
They need to make a guns version of this.......would be nice to compare! Would bet there are more people killed with traffic deaths for the most part.
US Deaths caused by illicit drug overdose - ~5,000 per year
WAR ON DRUGS!!!!
US Deaths caused by terrorists - 3000, twelve years ago
WAR ON TERROR!!!!
US Deaths caused by hacking - 1 (and that one by "friendly fire", sorry Aaron Schwartz)
WAR ON HACKING!!!!
US Deaths caused by automobile accidents - 30,000 per year
umm...
We'll get back to you on that.
(admittedly not a fair or entirely accurate comparison... but it does say something about America's priorities.)
> interactive map of crash data from the Pulitzer Center
Cool. It's easy to use. If you look down in the lower lef rrrrrrrrrrrrt crsh boom bang ding ow.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
When I saw the link, I thought it meant "road skill", but the page makes it clear that they mean "roads kill". Which is, frankly, nonsense. Roads are completely harmless. Now if they had written "cars kill" then they would at least have an argument (although not a sound one, IMHO, because it is bad driving or other stupid behaviour on the road that kills). But I'm pretty sure that the number of people killed by roads is negligible.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...that it's not newsworthy unless it involves some form of mass transportation, especially ones that fly.
Dumbest article I have seen here. I could care less if people die because they are not being careful enough driving, walking etc. is money supposed to come out of my pocket to help them? Tell them to stop driving then!
Can't navigate it at all. Try the "back" button, it creates a backreference every time the mouse is moved? wtf.
One thing missing, is the criteria used to determine how such deaths are qualified in each country. Japan, as an example, has their own criteria where you need to die in the first 12 hours after a crash to be counted as a highway fatality. This is dissimilar from other countries and allows Japan to appear to have much safer highways, cars, etc. in comparison.
:)
Skewed data is incorrect data, so it might help to at least publish stats based on identical criteria. Unless I missed it, I don't see that as part of this 'study', where it appears the stats are taken as given by each country - best example may be the two perfect scores
>> Traffic deaths are set to outpace AIDS/HIV and malaria in the developing world, so the UN is trying to change that perception.
What's wrong with "the perception"? This actually looks like good news to me. Is the problem that when people find out about all these traffic deaths (e.g., caused by a convenience) that they quit funding for disease control?
RoadSkill or RoadsKill? PetSmart or PetsMart? ExpertSexchange or ExpertsExchange?
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Traffic deaths are set to outpace AIDS/HIV and malaria in the developing world, so the UN is trying to change that perception.
I don't see what perception the UN is trying to change. That traffic accidents are a lesser cause of deaths than AIDS and malaria in developing countries? Does this even qualify as a "perception," much less one that needs rectifying?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Anyone else think the ambiguous URL (Roads Kill vs. Road Skill) is just a little bit funny?
I know what you did last summer. Just kidding, I don't work at the NSA.
i want to see that, along with how much money is spent to combat each type of death
Even with very low enforcement, India has stats slightly lower than China and also comparatively lower to many countries with far higher enforcement. Which made me happy, till I realize we probably have potholes to thank for this - hard to have traffic fatalities when everyone is inching along slowly on bad roads in high traffic!
I'm guessing they are trying to show correlation before traffic enforcement and deaths per capita - wish there was also a version that showed obedience of road rules & deaths per capita, i.e. when traffic stays in its own lane and doesn't cut signals, does that significantly reduce the fatality rate? I know, its a more subjective area so there can't be any good statistics for it - but imho just staying in lane properly would greatly reduce the 'speed' related deaths atleast, and maybe for some other categories too.
This chart is nearly useless, as it doesn't account for the average distance traveled per country. You'd be better off reading the wikipedia page that has those stats : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Or looking at trend in deaths / mile over time. For example, the US rate of 1.1 per 100M miles in 2011 is an all-time low : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year
is it me or is it a bit odd that that map has two bridges crossing lake Michigan
and a bridge going to Isle Royal
http://roadskillmap.com/#43.11702412135048,-86.5283203125,5
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
Do you see the flaw in this statistical method?
If you do it based on raw population, then places with very few cars and a lot of people are going to register unusually low.
For instance if there are a million people and ten cars, the number of accidents per capita will be extremely low, even if all the cars crash.
"Shocking"? No.
"Grisly"? No.
"Informative"? Yes.
Hyperbole aside, it's pretty interesting, but the summary implied it would show the location of every traffic death, not just the results of a global poll.
Proverbs 21:19
Even the high of around 40 deaths per 100k (Dominican Republic) is not THAT much more than the U.S.. Only 4x as much? I would have guessed it to be much, much worse based on experiencing driving in other countries.
Far from raising the issue to crisis level I'm more including to say that is not an issue worth paying any attention to whatsoever, it's a matter for local solutions, not the U.N. What are they going to do, put crossing guards at every intersection in Bangladesh? Hope they ship out coffins along with the guards!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How did they manage to get data from North Korea?
We'll continue to spend a metric assload of money on anti-terrrererserm instead of improving driver safety and training because "us vs. them" makes a much sexier political selling point than "us vs. some-not-easily-definable-abstract-thing" that's astronomically more likely to be a fatal danger to us.
And, really, that says as much about us as it does about the maligned policy makers we elect.
Or you could compare it to a country that has a proper driving test, like the UK with 2.86 per 100,000.
That's not a result of your driving test, it's a result of your traffic sucking.
I've driven in the U.K. before. You don't have as many people dying because it's rare to have a chance to be going fast enough that anyone can die in an accident. Mostly you are sitting still in L.A. quality traffic jams, until you get out into way open areas.
I'd love to see the figures broken out be region of the U.K. since northern U.K. has fairly narrow roads where people can, and do, drive fast...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice map, but some of the numbers are ridiculous. Sudan a "10" on seatbelt enforcement? Do they include women sentenced to 100 lashes for wearing make-up?
Garbage In, Garbage Out, regardless of the presentation.
Not surprised. Over 50% by motorcycle.
They get 5 people and the family dog on one scooter, and that is not one bit of sarcasm.
It would have been really cool (and morbid) if it did show every road death on earth, but all it does is provide aggregate numbers for most countries and presumably for just some recent period of time (in the past few years or so). This is a completely misleading slashdot subject line.... damn moderators.
gus
.. if only.
Iceland - 2.8
Every single driver is super laid back and spaced really well with other cars. After all, there are only 300k of you and most everything where anyone lives is just a few hours away from each other.
Sweden - 3
Netherlands - 3.9
Similar to Iceland except they go somewhat faster, but people are used to driving in crappy conditions so they have excellent skills in on dry roads.
UK - 3.7
If you're only able to move at 5MPH on average it's not likely you will die in an accident.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Using Firefox 32.0.1:
1. Open new tab: http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1086431_grisly-tech-interactive-map-displays-traffic-fatality-rates-around-the-world
2. Examine tab history (should be empty)
3. Click and drag in the Roads Kill box to pan the map
4. Examine tab history. Profit!
...we need to pass new laws that prohibit people from buying cars. This is outrageous!
Honestly, in many cases the rankings / ranges are the opposite what I assumed. Considering the US is recognized as having a high number of car-drivers (perhaps too many) and low number of public-transportation-users (perhaps too few)... I assumed we'd be way up there just due to us constantly driving into eachother.
Not that we're particularly low, but we're a lot less than some countries I would assume would have less than us (per capita)
Agenda 21 demands that private ownership of automobiles be outlawed. I notice the post above me already embracing this idea.
Neither have seen the effect on someone's life that losing easy accessibility to shopping and health services via their own car can have.
Nevermind that you lost your legs. For example, the number of serious injuries that don't result in death would be extremely high for countries where everyone drives a scooter. Why do we only count death for these statistics?
Normalizing for distance traveled doesn't make any sense at all. It would automatically reduce the accident numbers in proportion to country size, since very large countries tend to have empty roads whereas small countries often have densely packed roads. By far the majority of accidents involve more than one vehicle, so that would skew the statistics badly. You would have to add population density into the calculation as well to make it fair.
There is no clear and strong skewing factor when deaths are normalized for population, so the mapping in TFA is quite reasonable.
You can't say the same about guns.
Millions upon millions of guns are sold legally each year. Between hunting and range shooting you can in fact say that the OVERWHELMING majority of guns are used as safe, useful, non-criminal tools.
Only 31k people died from gun injuries in the U.S. in 2011 - of those many were criminals shot, and 19k were suicides! Again, millions of guns sold, a tiny number of deaths, especially if you compare number of deaths per total number of guns to number of deaths per total cars...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I drive about 40 miles a day, give or take 10 miles, slightly more on weekends. I continually see people paying little to no attention to their driving while they text or talk on the phone. Why do we have to live with this? Why can't "peace officers" for once do something that could actually make difference in everyone's safety?
Here's the full paragraph it mangled:
Death by car is random and suddenâ"which, unfortunately, means it tends to fall into the category of "accidental," and hence, unpreventable. But with traffic deaths set to outpace AIDS/HIV and malaria in the developing world, the UN is trying to change that perceptionâ"and this shocking interactive map ought to help.
The U.N. is trying to change perception that traffic deaths are unpreventable.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
This "shocking" and "grisly" map that shows "every traffic death on earth" is neither shocking nor grisly and it doesn't even come close to showing every traffic fatality in any one country, let alone the entire world. It's just a low res map with a small few statistics on it.
Hyperbole of this epic proportion is truly fantastic in every way. It's the best hyperbole I've ever seen and is likely the best in the entire world. But, this level of hyperbole totally doesn't help your point/cause. Perhaps you should imply or just outright state that the traffic fatalities are caused by terrorists, that would probably help.
When I saw the link, I thought it meant "road skill", but the page makes it clear that they mean "roads kill". Which is, frankly, nonsense. Roads are completely harmless. Now if they had written "cars kill" then they would at least have an argument (although not a sound one, IMHO, because it is bad driving or other stupid behaviour on the road that kills). But I'm pretty sure that the number of people killed by roads is negligible.
Well, if you're going to nitpick, then I'm afraid we have to go deeper. After all, it should be pointed out that the worst death rates are in developing countries where motorbikes and motorscooters are a dominant form of transportation. No cars involved, so "cars kill" is incomplete.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Dumbest article I have seen here. I could care less if people die because they are not being careful enough driving, walking etc. is money supposed to come out of my pocket to help them? Tell them to stop driving then!
Hmm, strange. Are you of the opinion that bad drivers only kill equally bad drivers and pedestrians?
Never mind your callous and self-centered attitude for a moment, but that's just delusional. Good drivers get injured by bad ones all the time. And if that really is the amount of focus you spend on yourself on a regular basis, I doubt you're one of the good ones on the road.
Many of the measures that have had success here are simply better safety equipment laws (helmets, seat belts, etc.) and better enforcement of traffic laws (speed, drunk driving, etc.). These are common sense measures we've adopted in the U.S., which is why our road fatalities are decreasing over time.
From TFA:
In a surprising number of countries, not knowing how to drive is no hindrance to obtaining a driver’s license or getting behind the wheel. In Nigeria, the Federal Road Safety Commission only recently made it compulsory for new drivers to take driving lessons and pass a test before obtaining a license; in the past you could simply buy a license.
The free market at work!
the latency on this thing is terrible. I just tested it out with a quick drive through the local playground, and it took half an hour to update the map.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Oh ok. Not too bad for things that are mostly only used safely and non-criminally as toys right?
Since as I said 19k of those were self inflicted (meaning they could have used a car or razor or jumped off a bridge, making the tool irrelevant), and some percentage of the remaining deaths were criminals being shot - that's actually a pretty good figure, made higher of course because people like you insist that many innocent people go unarmed.
As for toys, there were over 260k injuries from toys in 2011.
By your logic we should not allow children to have toys.
What an ass. The sad thing is, you are a dangerous ass, with views that will get people killed or raped who could have protected themselves otherwise.
There were 83k rapes in 2011. If all of those women had been armed do you think that number would be higher, or lower?
Every one of those rapes, and rapes in years to come is on you - because you persist in spreading your dogma that guns are bad, when plainly they can help. Every woman you convince to be scared of a simple tool, is one more victim that is of your making.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
obviously you have never driven in Netherlands. It's not that laid back
I have in fact driven in the netherlands. You may think it's not that laid back - you have plainly not driven in the U.S. or anywhere with aggressive traffic for that matter.
Try super high enforcement of traffic law
Not that I saw, apart from some speed cameras. It's that more people follow the rules as they are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Deaths per capita is not a useful statistic. Deaths per car mile traveled is much more enlightening. The US population has steadily increased and the death rate per mile travelled has steadily decreased. In the US there is about 1 - 1.2 deaths per 100 MILLION vehicle miles traveled. The UK death rate is 4.1 per 100 MILLION miles traveled. BUT if you look at the data provided in the chart, it would appear driving in the UK is safer than the US. But, it is not.
Have you ever been hit by a rolling dumpster going downhill at 8KPH?
Yes, I have been hit at that speed - rear-ended by someone because "I stopped too fast".
You may notice we are talking about cars here. I was in one when hit, because I stay off the roads when on foot...
The result of the hit? A small scuff on my bumper, we both went on our ways. I certainly did not show up on a map of fatalities.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have also driven around Germany. Frankly I found it not that different from driving in the U.S., except Germans were more likely to follow laws, and very much more likely in particular to stay to the right on faster roads.
Training is not the issue. No amount of training will make a person less of an asshole while driving. Culturally, Germany simply has fewer self-important assholes and that shows while driving.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
by population density and accidents per mile driven are much more per population density is the correct way to measure these things
The oceans are shaded to indicate they have more than zero deaths. So I doubt the rest of the information is valid. Looks like a group with an agenda that is bending statistics to mislead people into their viewpoint. If you are in an accident in an area with poor medical or emergency services, then you are more likely to die than in a bad accident with much better medical and emergency services. So deaths is not a good way to compare driving.
Map is disappointing. Whomever decided that color scheme should be slapped.
I was expecting something like this: http://map.itoworld.com/road-casualties-usa but for all countries.
The map linked has every traffic fatality in the United States, and the age, sex, and classification of each death.
They could have just listed the fatality rates of the different countries; or provided a color-coded list.
For it to be useful as a map; it should be more granular, than merely painting every country the same color..... it should show fatality rates for states, provinces, counties, cities, and individual streets. Now that would make sense as a map.
I would expect that the number of accidents would be far more related to miles driven than number of people who live there.
From 2012:
Wikipedia records 12,069 road deaths in Thailand in the last year that records were kept. The Songkran holiday takes place over a week. 12069 divided by 52 weeks in a year - in an average week, there are 232 road deaths. During Songkran week there were apparently 320 deaths - but only 88 more than in any ordinary week.
Considering the large increase in long-distance travel over Songkran week (families piling into their cars and heading back to their home province), is a one-week increase in road deaths really so unexpected?
If you don't own a car you are not immune to dying in traffic. A lot of the casualties are pedestrians, or cyclists. Depending on where you live your odds wouldn't be much better if you never entered a vehicle. The US data has a relatively large percentage of people dying in car wrecks, possibly because people preferably use cars to get from a to b.
In the Netherlands, a lot of people commute by bicycle (because the country is flat, distances are small, and cities are congested), and a relatively large percentage of casualties are cyclists. Most of those accidents would involve a car as well, but I know fatal accidents happen when roads are slippery or with elderly people on bicycles that are one sided and fatal.
I was hoping to see something like the new BI Maps junk from Excel 2013 so I could see where to not drive in my city. TLDR give me what I want.
When will this stupid meme die?
It's not a meme, it's life experience.
The average speed on UK urban roads at the peak is 13mph
Which bears out EXACTLY what I said. Driving around cities is HORRIBLY SLOW.
I'm not even talking about London. I'm talking about driving through random cities around the UK, northern and a bit western also.
Yes on the highways you are going at an avergae rate of speed generally but I ALSO was stuck in multi-hour long traffic jams just trying to go through cities on major arteries, traffic jams the likes of which I have only ever seen driving around LA.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if anyone was curious they are using mapbox. oops, looks like mapbox.com is being slashdotted right now...nevermind.