A wealth of travel safety data can now be accessed through a web dashboard thanks to the New Jersey Safety and Health Outcomes Center. The organization, launched 13 years ago, is compiling and consolidating data from various sources in a publicly accessible website for use by safety planners and practitioners, among others.
“Our goal really is to reimagine how data—particularly traffic safety data—are collected, integrated, analyzed and shared to support safe transport in New Jersey,” said Allison E. Curry, who is director of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She spoke about the dashboard at the June 10 meeting of the NJTPA’s Regional Transportation Advisory Committee.
The dashboard draws upon a data warehouse built by the New Jersey Safety and Health Outcomes Center, which includes various kinds of safety data from 2004 through 2020, including data on crashes, driver licensing, EMS activity, trauma center registrations and discharges, and more. She said integrating all the data is a “laborious process.”. It includes 125 million records on 24,000 individuals who are tracked over time.
She said consolidating the data serves a vital purpose since the official state crash reports miss one-third of injuries because they don’t capture data from hospitals. Integrating this and other data sources, the Center presents a more complete picture of traffic safety across the state.
The database includes geocoded data on where people involved in crashes live and where the crashes occurred. Algorithms analyzing last names cross-referenced with demographic information from the Census help identify the race and ethnicity of the people, which is not available on crash reports or in licensing files. This enhances the ability to add equity considerations in targeting safety campaigns and improvements.
She offered the example of using data to identify where crashes of cars without child restraint systems occurred, based on records of crashes causing injuries to children. The data patterns can be used to target communities with programs to improve use of the restraints. A similar analysis can be used, she said, to guide interventions to promote seatbelt use.
The dashboard is available at njsho.chop.edu and includes 10 webpages focusing on various aspects of traffic safety. The data can be shown for individual counties and allows comparisons among counties. Curry said the Center is planning to host trainings for people interested in using the dashboard. She said partners in the effort include the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety, New Jersey Department of Transportation, New Jersey Department of Health, the state Office of Information Technology and the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. A video of Curry’s presentation is here.