1. New York’s Traffic Safety Statistical Repository – Visualizing Crash and Ticket Data
Presented by Hilda Hardy
Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research
University at Albany, State University of New York
August 8, 2017

2. Project Goal
To design and build a repository of traffic safety data accessible via the internet to the:
Public
Traffic Safety Community
State & Local Agency Management
Research Community

3. Additional Project Objectives
Make data available in a more timely and efficient manner
Develop analytic & management reports that can be generated and printed online
Provide more specialized reports according to users’ requests
Make the system user-friendly and interactive
Display both tabular and graphical data
Provide filters, percentages, sorting capability
Design for expansion – census data, roadway data
Users are able to generate & print variety of reports, similar to summary reports that have historically been available – hold up copy of a paper report; also have filters to use ex. Single year vs multiple years

4. Traffic Safety Statistical Repository (TSSR)
System developed by ITSMR, a research center affiliated with the University at Albany, SUNY
Partnership with the Traffic Records Coordinating Council (TRCC)
Funded by the Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee (GTSC)
Launched in March 2016 with Crash data
Expanded in February 2017 with Traffic Ticket data
Discussions with folks at DMV, GTSC and DOT led to the suggestion that because of ITSMR’s long history of working with the crash data and fulfilling many of the data requests that were coming into DMV, let ITSMR build a crash data system that would address current needs.
Approved and being funded by GTSC under Section 405c .
TRCC and GTSC have been great partners in supporting this project.

5. Project Guidance and Direction
TSSR Technical & Users Advisory Group
Governor’s Traffic Safety Committee (GTSC)
NY State Police
NYS Dept of Motor Vehicles (DMV)
NYS Chiefs of Police
NYS Dept of Transportation (NYSDOT)
NYS Sheriffs Association
NYS Dept of Health (DOH)
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
NYC Dept of Transportation (NYCDOT)
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)
Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO)
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
Early in project established the Technical & Users Advisory Group to provide guidance and direction to project development team
Includes representatives from these key agencies responsible for the data collection & use of the data
Have held multiple meetings since project began; one of its first activities was to set up small working groups to identify data fields to be included & determine standard & specialized reports needed;
Topics discussed by entire group included various policy issues related to data contained in system and their use
Want to give you a brief summary of the issues discussed and resulting policies

6. Project Design Governing Policies
What data should be included in the reporting data set?
All reportable crashes, police-reported crashes
All ticket data
How many years of data should be included?
A 10-year rolling set of “final” data, beginning with 2009 data
How often should preliminary data be refreshed?
Crash data – monthly, only completed cases
Ticket data – at least twice a year
DEF of Reportable crashes – governed by VTL –
F& PI
PDO over $1,000
Motorist
ITSMR typically pulls crash data on the 15th of each month; going forward more scrubbing will be done than previously done

7. Participating Agencies & Organizations
TSSR Focus Group
Participating Agencies & Organizations
NYS DMV Communications Office
NYS Traffic Safety Boards
NYS DOT Communications Office
NYS Impaired Driver Program Directors Association
NY State Police Communications Office
STOP-DWI New York
NY District Attorneys Association
Transportation Alternatives
NY Motor Truck Association
These are agencies and organizations invited to participated in the Focus Group
Members of the Focus Group were pleased with the policy decisions

8. TSSR Implementation Hardware – 2 Dell PowerEdge R730 servers
Software – SAS products
Step 1 – Extract crash data and ticket data from DMV and other systems
Step 2 – Maintain cleansed data in relational (transactional) database
Step 3 – Use ETL tool to load data from relational DB into data repository (SAS DataFlux Data Management Studio)
Step 4 – Create data marts from data repository for query and reporting purposes (SAS Visual Analytics)

9. TSSR System - Demo www.itsmr.org/tssr
Some of the features in this presentation are not yet available in our production environment; look for them in the next few weeks.

10. TSSR Main Page
The TSSR main page has links to our crash reports and ticket reports. Help tools are in the upper right; the data snapshot dates are shown in the box.

11. Crash Reports – Major Traffic Safety Topics – What & Where
Crash reports are organized into 2 columns – statewide crash summary reports and county crash summary reports.
Reports are based on various traffic safety issues – Motorcycle, Pedestrian, Alcohol-Related, etc.

12. Report Sections – Who, When & Why
NYS Crash Summary, General Section
Tables show general crash numbers; use checkboxes to filter results.
Each report has several sections. The additional sections on Safety Equipment Use are examples of specialized tables created in response to users’ requests.

13. Interactive Charts for Selected Report Sections
Most sections have corresponding charts, where we display 5 years of data by default.

14. Using Filters – MV Occupants Killed
Fatalities/Persons Injured Section – I can choose the year or years, severity of crash, and the roles I’m interested in. Selecting values in the chart legends allows me to filter other charts showing totals.
For example, to find the number of Motor Vehicle Occupants killed, …

15. Using Filters – MV Occupants Killed
Select Killed (K), then control-click Drivers and Passengers in the chart legend.
Totals appear in the Persons Killed or Injured chart.

16. Using Filters – Male Drinking Drivers Under Age 30 in F & PI Crashes
Another example of using charts to make selections and filter the results – here, F & PI crashes involving male drinking drivers under the age of 30.

17. Using Filters – Male Drinking Drivers Under Age 30 in F & PI Crashes
Select Drinking Drivers, click Male in the Gender chart legend, and control-click Under 16, and in the Age Group legend.
Totals appear in the Drivers chart.

18. Safety Equipment Use
The charts on Safety Equipment Use show, for MV Occupants, Restraint Used, No Restraint Used, and Unknown. For Motorcyclists and Bicyclists, Helmet Used, No Helmet Used and Unknown.

19. All Crashes vs. Alcohol-Related Crashes – Day of Week / Time of Day
In general, crashes in New York State are more likely to happen on weekdays, especially on Fridays, than on weekends.
Overall, crashes are more likely to occur from 3pm to 6pm and from noon to 3pm.

20. All Crashes vs. Alcohol-Related Crashes – Day of Week / Time of Day
But the patterns are very different for A-R crashes – many more of them occur on Saturday and Sunday, and during the hours 6pm to 6am.

21. All Crashes vs. Motorcycle Crashes by Month
Overall, crashes are spread over the months of the year, with fewer occurring February to April.

22. All Crashes vs. Motorcycle Crashes by Month
You can see that MC crashes are seasonal in NYS: more likely to occur during the months May-September.

23. Ticket Data – Areas of Interest, Statewide and County
Ticket data are organized into columns for Statewide and County reports.
They cover several areas of interest – Tickets issued for Speeding, Seat Belts, Cell Phones, Texting and Impairment.

24. Ticket Data – Traffic Tickets by Enforcement Agency
The statewide Traffic Tickets report shows total tickets issued and a breakdown by type of enforcement agency.

25. Ticket Data – Traffic Tickets by Violation
Another section shows a breakdown by select violations. I can choose others that I’m interested in from the list.

26. Ticket Report Sections – Who, What, Where, When
Each ticket report on a specific type of violation has 9 sections, showing details about the drivers, where and when the tickets were issued, and the adjudication status and disposition status of the tickets.

27. Speeding Tickets – Adjudication Status & Disposition Status
We can see on the left the number of speeding ticket cases that were adjudicated and the number that were pending.
On the right, of the adjudicated cases, we see the number that were convicted and the number dismissed/acquitted.

28. Summary Use Business Intelligence software – SAS Visual Analytics
Easily create reports – point & click, drag & drop
Once back-end data are prepared and refreshed, all reports are automatically updated
Organize the data
Help users find what they need quickly
Provide consistent format
Provide help tools
Visualize the data
Show relationships and trends
Show major results – not all results
Use caution when numbers are small
Let users filter results – dropdowns, checkboxes, chart legends
Keep it simple!

29. Next Steps Add new reports as needed for GTSC
Incorporate normalized data statewide and county-wide

30. Thank you!
Hilda Hardy New York State Traffic Safety Statistical Repository: