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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

January/February 2004
Facts & Figures

Pie ChartAccidents Creep Up While Injuries/Fatalities Decline
The bad news is that the total number of motor vehicle collisions in the Bay Area rose 2 percent in 2002, to 106,530. The good news is that the entire net increase was accounted for by collisions resulting in property damage only, which as a group comprise almost two-thirds (64.7 percent) of all motor vehicle collisions (see pie chart). Collisions involving either injuries or fatalities were down by 3 percent in 2002 (to 37,618), the second straight annual decline in this key indicator of transportation safety. In fact, as shown on the table below, the number of injury-and-fatality collisions is at its lowest point in the last five years.

That being said, the number of injury collisions and fatal collisions fluctuated within a fairly narrow range during the five-year period from 1998 to 2002. The same holds true for property-damage collisions and total collisions. Only time will tell whether year-to-year changes in the data indicate a trend, or whether they are merely normal variations in a relatively stable phenomenon.

Interestingly, although freeway driving accounts for approximately 60 percent of all vehicle miles driven in the Bay Area, only about one-quarter of all collisions occur on freeways.
— Joe Curley
Injury and Fatal Collisions on Bay Area Roadways, 1998–2002
 
Collisions
Percent Change
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2001–02
1998–2002
Injury Collisions
39,027
37,913
39,609
38,322
37,167
–3%
–5%
Fatal Collisions
433
405
444
449
451
0%
+4%
Total Injury and Fatal Collisions
39,460
38,318
40,053
38,771
37,618
–3%
–5%
Property Damage Only Collisions
67,164
65,339
70,001
65,219
68,912
+6%
+3%
Total Collisions
106,624
103,657
110,054
103,990
106,530
+2%
0%

State of the SystemNow Available: The information in the above article is excerpted from the just-released Bay Area Transportation: State of the System 2003. This is the second year that MTC and Caltrans District 4 have published this handy reference tool, which tracks trends in regional mobility and safety, including transit on-time performance, freeway congestion, carpool-lane time savings, collisions involving pedestrians/cyclists and the like. The report also gauges the state of repair of various components of the region’s transportation network.

The report can be viewed online. To order a hard copy, contact the MTC Library:

E-mail library@mtc.ca.gov
Fax 510.817.5932
Phone 510.817.5836


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