Berkeley police handled at least 18 crashes in May that resulted in injuries to pedestrians or cyclists, according to preliminary data obtained by Berkeleyside.
That includes 13 injury crashes where drivers struck pedestrians and five involving cyclists. Berkeleyside put them on an interactive map.* Orange markers on the map above show pedestrian injury crashes. Blue markers show collisions involving cyclists. Berkeleyside also mapped the 17 vehicle crashes that resulted in injuries to motorists (purple and yellow markers).
In January, there were an estimated 30 injury crashes: 19 involved pedestrians and 11 involved cyclists. In February, there were 24: 14 with pedestrians and 10 with cyclists. In March, there were at least 13 injury crashes: nine where drivers struck pedestrians and four involving cyclists. In April, there were 17: 11 involving pedestrians and six involving cyclists.
All of the cyclist-involved crashes took place during daylight hours. Of the pedestrian-involved crashes, nine took place during the day and four took place at night.
Last year in May there were 26 injury crashes that involved pedestrians or cyclists. May 2019 was notable, however, because it appears, anecdotally, that more of the crashes resulted in serious injuries. The department’s Fatal Accident Investigation Team was called out at least four times.
A number of readers have pointed out that people walk and bike in Berkeley at much higher rates than in many other cities, meaning it’s actually safer to get around in Berkeley even if raw numbers for injury crashes may sometimes be higher than those elsewhere.
Berkeleyside has also asked the city whether it’s possible to get data related to injury severity on a monthly basis. Stay tuned for updates.
More resources
Want to dig deeper into traffic safety data? Check out these resources.
- The Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (California Highway Patrol)
- A new interactive website called Street Story (UC Berkeley’s SafeTREC)
- Transportation Injury Mapping System (also SafeTREC)
* Please note: BPD said its list may be incomplete because not all the reports are done and because some of the incidents are tracked separately. Bicycle crashes could potentially involve fixed objects or the roadway rather than vehicles.
