Analysis of the New York City’s Vehicle Crash Open Data

Publication and curation of open data creates value to the society by stimulating innovation, increasing accountability, and building trust. In transportation studies, continuous increase in data availability, especially through the open data movement has led to acceleration of research. Yet, for it to be broadly accessible, open data also need to be accompanied by easy-to-use interfaces that facilitate further research. This paper details the development of a New York City (NYC) vehicle crash analysis tool and provides detailed insights using big data technologies. The tool includes an intuitive interface, allowing for direct visualization of data. It explores the vehicle crash data from last 9 years to observe trends related to person injuries and fatalities happening in the boroughs of NYC. The tool also allows more in-depth research such as causal analysis on the top reasons or major contributing factors to a crash and gaining of insights based on the reported data to mitigate future traffic related fatalities.