I usually commute by bike and I regularly enjoy making a 30km leisure trip to change my mind. Sadly, safety on the road is a concern when you spend time − short or long − on the saddle. Accidents involving a bike and a car have often dramatic consequences. Arriving in a new city such as Berlin requires me to adapt to a new environment. The way people drive cars and ride bikes are different, as well as the infrastructure (and the weather…). Therefore, to know which situations require special attention, I wanted to find out what are the main causes of bike/car accident.
I found that the Federal Statistical Office of Germany publishes an “Accident Atlas”. This is a database containing “all” the accidents involving personal injuries in Germany by year. I wish it would not be such a huge dataset, but only for the year 2020, there are 237994 records (ca 650 per day!). Each year is published as a separate file from 2016 to 2020. So there is a lot of data available to deal with.
Before looking into the raw data for my new residential city, I saw that the police of Berlin publishes a general report on the accident in Berlin each year. Moreover it issues a report dedicated to the accidents involving bike cycling. I was impressed, and I am wondering how many cities are publishing and analysing this kind of data.
Picture of the day
I love the design from the cover of the special report about bike accident in Berlin. It contains a lot of useful information. that I am currently reading.
