Earlier this month Charlotte’s Department of Transportation released its annual list of High Accident Locations. To see it, download it here. (Be sure to notice what it does and doesn’t measure; for instance it doesn’t measure traffic accidents on interstate highways.) The report drew a news article in The Charlotte Observer, “Report: Charlotte traffic collisions down; fatalities up.”
Here’s what I noticed: Among the Top 10 high accident locations, seven were either uptown or nearby. Of those seven, all but one involved one-way streets. The only one of those seven that did not was East Seventh Street and Hawthorne Lane, in the Elizabeth neighborhood.
The city’s top high accident location was Cambridge Commons Drive and Harrisburg Road (average daily traffic of 15,000), in east Charlotte near I-485, with a three-year total of 49 accidents and a crash rate (a formula taking into account the traffic volume – to know more download the report) of 2.98.
Other in-town streets:
2. North College Street and East Eighth Street.
3. North College Street and East Ninth Street.
5. Third-fourth Connector Street and East Fourth Street at Kings Drive.
7. East Seventh Street and Hawthorne Lane.
8. South Church Street and West Hill Street and the ramp to West Belk Freeway.
9. East Seventh and North College Street.
If you’re thinking that correlation (one-way streets and high number of accidents) does not equal causation, of course you are right. The streets were converted to one-way years ago by traffic engineers who wanted to get vehicles into and out of uptown as efficiently as possible. That was the thinking several decades ago. So busy streets are going to have more accidents.
But the crash rate takes the street’s business into account. What else might account for the striking number of uptown one-way streets that are atop the high accident list? Could it be speed? Could it be people driving home from work and just not taking as much care? (The report also shows that mid- to late afternoon rush hour is the time of day with more accidents.)
But notice something interesting: The No. 11 High Accident Location was East Fifth Street and North Caldwell Street. Notice the accident numbers over three years: 10 in 2010, 11 in 2011 but dropping to 6 in 2012. That intersection used to be where two one-way streets crossed. But from Fifth Street south, Caldwell has been converted to two-way. Did that cause the lower number of accidents in 2012?
I’ve emailed CDOT Director Danny Pleasant, to see if he had comments. I’ll add them if he responds.