An Interactive Tool to Compare and Communicate Traffic Safety Risks: TrafficSTATS

Abstract

TrafficSTATS (www.traffic-stats.us) is a publicly-available, interactive, web-based query tool that provides estimates of passenger vehicle and other traffic safety risks. Using "cube" database technology, TrafficSTATS houses publicly-available government data on traffic fatalities from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and personal travel behavior from the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) and calculates risk statistics in real time for user-specified queries. We describe the motivation for developing the tool, explain the technology developed to store the data and facilitate the queries, and provide a series of examples of the types of comparisons that can be made quickly and efficiently.