The active travel Collision Tracker at collisiontracker.ie was relaunched today with an expanded scope to cover all of Ireland — the website allows anybody to report hazards, near misses, and collisions related to active travel.
The tracker was originally set up as a Dublin-focused cycling mapping system to find patterns of collisions by the Dublin Inquirer, a local newspaper, and with the help of Brian Rogers, of Orbiter, it has been expanded to cover the country and active travel generally.
Originally the Dublin Inquirer used the information collected to write reports which highlighted problem areas for cycling. Now this has expended to IrishCycle.com and Cork-based reader-funded journalism outlet Tripe + Drisheen, with more possibility to join in the future.
It might take some time before those articles are produced as it requires enough input from users before patterns are more apparent as the volume of data grows.
Writing in the Dublin Inquirer today, Sam Tranum, a co-founder of the newspaper, said: “We’ll be looking for clusters, so we can report on danger spots and how they could be made safer, or trends and what they say about how to make the roads safer – that kind of thing. We also hope that local councillors, council staff, and others will be interested in the reports we’re gathering and put them to use to make the roads safer.”
He outlined how there are known issues with the availability of RSA data on collisions, and a complete lack of understanding on where close passes happen.
“Thanks to Brian Rogers, of Orbiter, who built the Active Travel Collision Tracker, and to all our readers who have been so generous with their time reviewing early versions and offering feedback on how to make it better and better,” he said.
Tranum added: “If you have questions about the Active Travel Collision Tracker, they might be answered in the FAQs at the bottom of the home page. If you have questions that are not, or want to get involved, you can contact me at sam@dublininquirer.com.
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This is a brilliant resource. Aside from gathering data that hopefully will feed into infrastructure improvements, its a handy thing to take a look at if you are planning to cycle in a new area or even to review the dangers in your own area.
Hi Cian, the projection on the map should be changed to Irish Grid or ITM to get a “top down” view of the map
Good idea. Hopefully will help with infrastructure improvements.