[bigtoe416]

I used to be a volunteer firefighter and I see some of the fatalities (but not all) on this map. Looking at one of them some of the information is quite accurate (type of accident, what caused it, age of person) while other information is not at all accurate (number of people in the car, if a seatbelt was in use). It's curious how some fairly important pieces of data can be quite wrong.

[Bencarneiro]

The data here is processed from NHTSA's FARS database. When someone dies in an accident, it gets input into a STATE reporting system, and FARS is manufactured by analyzing each state's individual record system. The feds consolidate all this data and publish a unified dataset annually. They say it's "a lot cheaper and just as good as collecting it themselves"

Additional errors are potentially produced from my own processing of the federal data, but those will be rooted out over time. Project being OS will hopefully help with that.

[toomuchtodo]

If you need help merging additional data sources, this project might be able to assist. I know the folks, and they are motivated to deliver open data.

https://www.data-liberation-project.org/

[topsycatt]

I noticed seemingly all deaths in Manhattan are labeled as having occurred in flushing, a nearby neighborhood. Perhaps an off by one error?

[mrtimo]

Thanks for this background. What's the best way to download your data, or the feds data?

[kevin_thibedeau]

> It's curious how some fairly important pieces of data can be quite wrong.

I was nearly killed by a driver who disregarded the law and the police officer intentionally disabled his bodycam when interviewing a key witness, never questioned me, let the driver off with no tickets for his violations, and submitted a report with factual inaccuracies. Crooked cops don't have an interest in reporting the truth.

[matsemann]

I get so angry when I ready the reports, and they mostly talk about the victim. "The pedestrian was wearing dark clothing", "the bicyclist wasn't wearing a helmet" (like that would've avoided the accident?), etc.

Of course, the victim is most likely being transported away in an ambulance or even dead, so they got little say. And the offender can paint the story with their picture: "the sun was low and blinding", "the cyclist came in at high speed" (probably a third of the car..), etc.

So that's what the report will say.

[TomK32]

There's an Austria paper that looked into the accident cause "speeding" (nicht angepasste Geschwindigkeit) means across the german-speaking countries. The results boiled down to "it depends" on the officer typing in the data as there aren't any reviews or such. There's good data on other accident aspects like the seat-belt-usage you mentioned (and it's shocking how many people die because they are too lazy to use their seat-belt) but those aren't down to subjective judgement on the spot.

Good data is needed as a few accident causes do tend to be common in certain road/location conditions and those can be fixed. For example while the total number of accidents on train crossing is low (15~20 fatalities per year) in Austria, all of them are the driver's fault and almost all (except for massive idiot drivers) can be fixed by installing automatic gates on all crossings.

[zxexz]

Installing automatic gates at crossings can fix (almost) 15~20 fatalities a year there? I've seen at least double-digit traffic deaths in my life, 4 of which I've watched happen and can vividly recollect, here in the USA. Installing infrastructure to prevent deaths seems like a no-brainer if you live in a country that supposedly cares.

It's apparently not a no-brainer here -- two of the lethal accidents I've witnessed [one involving ripping the door off a car with the help of some kind stangers, to get someone out of a literally flaming wreck] would have been entirely avoided by a simple traffic circle. The most grizzly one I remember could likely (it seems to me; I'm not a traffic...engineer?) have been avoided by not having a low-traffic on-ramp connect directly to a major highway, when there was a clearly-denoted on-ramp a quarter-mile away. Seeing another human with their head 20ft away leaves a bit of an impression on a child.

[lupusreal]

There's a thing that happens where people get "" trapped"" by automatic crossing gates. They get their car on the tracks as the gate closes in front and behind them. The gates are very weak so they could drive right through, but some sort of mental block often prevents this and so they stay there with their car on the tracks, sometimes not even thinking to get out of the car.

I guess it goes to show that stupid finds a way.

[Aeolun]

> it's shocking how many people die because they are too lazy to use their seat-belt

It’s hard to explain to people they can only ever be in a single accident in which they’re not wearing their seatbelt.

Mostly they proclaim it’s fine, because they’re never in any accidents, and they drive safe anyway.

[throwaway2037]

Do you still have railroad crossings without automated gates? If yes, why? Cultural resistance?

[dclowd9901]

I was looking at an incident in my neighborhood. In our city, we have frequent incidents of elderly drivers killing pedestrians in motor vehicles. The incident in our neighborhood did not show a driver age but did show the pedestrian age. I cannot imagine why the driver age would not have been recorded in an incident like that (but their height and weight were).

[rad_gruchalski]

In your neighbourhood you probably have frequent incidents of elderly drivers of motor vehicles killing pedestrians.

[throwaway2037]

Can I a real question? How do personally deal with the trauma of responding to an accident with death(s)? I don't have the guts to do a job like that.

[jIyajbe]

I was an EMT in the Los Angeles area for four years, and then in the Seattle area for four years. I developed the mindset that even if the patient died, we (the firefighters/EMTs/paramedics) had at least given them a chance to live that they would not have had without us. That helped soften the blow of the deaths.

That strategy was less effective for calls where the patient was declared dead on scene, and so no treatment was possible. I still remember each of those calls. Fortunately, I was never traumatized by them, in a PTSD sense. Rather, I learned the lesson of realizing how easily I, or one of my loved ones, can simply disappear one day; so I learned to make sure they all know that I love them, and to not take their presence in my life for granted.

[JackMorgan]

Not the original commenter, but as a volunteer firefighter and EMT it is something everyone has to figure out for themselves.

There's tools like therapy, CISM, CBT, humor, and the support of your buddies. Too often there's drink, pills, and suicide. It's not a particularly widespread detail, but suicide is the largest killer of firefighters by a large margin. I think that is a symptom of putting too much work and pressure on too few people.

I have found CBT, exercise, fasting, and daily yoga help keep stress and depression at bay for me.

I also am lucky to be a volunteer, so I can afford to skip as many calls as I want after an upsetting call. The career folks I know have it much much worse, because they might be on a horrible call but if they want to get paid they have to keep working. They might have an entire 24hr shift with several troubling calls back to back.

I used to think all fire and ambulance should be paid career. However, there's an important side effect of a larger group of volunteers sharing the burden. If you see too much to handle, you can take off all the time you need to recover. You aren't trapped by the job into witnessing more than you can handle. My wife recently was on an ambulance call that troubled her. She has taken a few weeks off from ambulance to decompress.

That being said, volunteerism is seriously struggling in America. If you live in the 70% of America that is served by volunteers, it is likely your local is extremely understaffed. Too many companies only have a small handful of firefighters who still show up, and those heroes aren't "taking time off" to recover, because if they do, the engine doesn't move. Too much of the country is overly reliant on volunteers but isn't showing up to be a volunteer to share the load. It's a socialist program, but there aren't enough people showing up to share the work, so it's collapsing.

And just paying folks to do this full time comes with very real increased tax burden and acute trauma on those individuals. Paying career staff isn't cheap.

If you live in an area that is served by volunteers, please seriously consider volunteering yourself. A lot of people on this site are young and physically able to volunteer. Tech folks are often well situated to volunteer, as we are more likely to be financially stable, have flexibility to dip for a call if it's urgent, often work remote, and sometimes would really benefit from getting out in the sunshine and meeting folks. Also it's so rewarding to do something so real after a big day of mental labor.

In the volunteer service you don't ever have to do something if you don't feel comfortable with it. If you show up to a call and you don't want to go inside the building you don't have to. Plenty of work is needed outside of a structure fire. If the call comes and you're too tired or busy, no big deal. I only make ~20% of my local calls, and that is high for my company. I've said "no way" to my officer before, and he reconsidered or found someone else.

You also don't have to be in "perfect shape". I thought they were going to be making me do crazy fitness tests to join like in the movies. Then I realized, we are so desperate for help we'll take anyone if your doctor will sign a form saying you're fit for duty. We've got members who are 200lb overweight, members who weigh 100lb, need glasses, some are 14, and some members who are over 70. Some can't wear an air pack so they do fire ground support work outside. Kids under 18 and folks who haven't yet gone to fire school aren't legally allowed inside a structure fire anyway. If you want to show up and put on gear, we've got work for you. There's so much work, it's so hard, and so few show up that anyone who does is a help.

It can be extremely rewarding to be a first responder in a small town. We only have 4k residents in my local, and I like getting to meet them and help them.

After just a few years I can't go to the grocery store without waving to half a dozen people. My calendar is filling up with invites to backyard BBQs, music jam sessions, a pie baking competition club, DnD games, a computer club, and a lifting club, all discovered through just meeting cool local folks. Between volunteering and regularly visiting our local busy coffeeshop at peak "sit around and chat" times, I'm feeling connected to a community in a way I thought only happens in movies and TV.

Definitely reach out to me if you ever want to talk about it. I'll happily answer any questions you have. I will say I'm kicking myself for not joining sooner. For eight years I was next to an amazing firehouse and never knew!

[ekianjo]

data sources are notoriously bad everywhere human entry is the processs

[gamepsys]

When I was in highschool I had to fill out a survey about my experiences with substances. I remember getting a laugh out of lying on the survey. Always take any self reported questionnaire results with a large grain of salt.

[gymbeaux]

I used to scrape the calls for service for my local PD, and the inaccuracies were considerable. Of course there were typos in addresses or cross-streets, but there were also inaccuracies with how the incident was classified (for example, a former coworker and friend said his neighbor called the cops on him in the middle of the night one day- I looked it up and it was classified as a domestic disturbance rather than a noise complaint).

Some records, like those involving child abuse, don’t show on their calls for service website at all, so that’s an entire group of data that we the public just don’t get to know about.

Government data is notorious for being dirty and inaccurate.

[chao-]

I had a similar, awful curiosity. Looked up the death of a friend. All of the details I ever learned (speeding, ran off road, jumped curb, hit a tree) are listed accurately here.

The claim that only 1 out of 5 deaths is even recorded on this map is sobering.

[tonetegeatinst]

Any idea what spicifly might be the possible causes for data errors? Like is every state using the exact same form? Are are people who filled them out trained how to do so correctly?

[markstos]

It's not just states, it's every law enforcement jurisdiction, which then gives their data to the state, which then standardizes it. In turn, it appears the states aggregate it at the federal level. In my mid-size city, jurisdictions that operate here include the city police, county sheriff, university police, state police and Department of Natural Resources law enforcement.

At least in the Indiana, the quality of this data... varies widely. Coordinates don't always match reality, the street names can't always be geocoded, sometimes the timestamps don't even parse as valid dates.

I talked to a city staffer here whose job largely involves cleaning up this data. But not in a permanent sense. They are using the aggregate data handed down from the state, and they are cleaning a local copy. Then next year or next month, they get more data and have to re-merge or re-do their fixes because their fixes aren't upstream, and have originated from another jurisdiction.

The whole system needs improvement!

[Falkon1313]

Yeah, I checked one near me and it said EMS arrived 1 minute after being notified and victim was transported via EMS air. Time to arrive at hospital seems reasonable for an air transport from that spot though. So I guess the helicopter just happened to be idly hovering over the van at the time it went off the embankment?

[nradov]

Ground EMS could have arrived in 1 minute if they were already nearby. Just because the patient was transported by air doesn't necessarily mean that the helicopter unit was first to arrive.

[bluGill]

Even if the helicopter is overhead for a planned drill you can't land it in a minute. 30 years ago if my first cpr class the teacher said it was typically 45 minutes from when you call - which is why they (in a big city where a level 1 trauma hospitial is at most a 30 minute drive away) almost never call for air help.