Car crashes have become increasingly common and problematic throughout the United States, particularly for cyclists and pedestrians. This is particularly true in Washington, D.C., where car crashes reached an all-time high in 2022. While spatial analysis of car crashes has been conducted elsewhere, there is a need for further research on where car crashes occur within Washington, D.C. The main objective of this paper is to identify hotspots of crashes in the District of Columbia between 2009 and 2023. Other objectives are to identify where crashes resulting in pedestrian injury (pedestrian-involved crashes) and cyclist injury (cyclist-involved crashes) take place within the District of Columbia. Crash data maintained by the District Department of Transportation are used, in addition to TIGER shapefiles used for geocoding and visualization of data. Data preparation and analysis were performed using packages in R. Spatial analysis was performed in R using three types of spatial methods. These methods include kernel density estimation, local Moran’s I, and Getis-Ord Gi*. The findings of this paper suggest that car crashes are not randomly distributed, but rather are heavily concentrated in areas such as downtown D.C. and the areas surrounding the National Mall. Pedestrian-involved car crashes follow a similar pattern, but cyclist-involved car crashes have a different distribution that appears related to cyclist infrastructure.

Lab 5 for GEOG 588

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A document displaying maps of car crashes in Washington, D.C. in 2022. These maps include speed-related crashes and crashes that resulted in injury.

Analysis of county-level CDC 500 Cities/PLACES data that examines location and household income.