Mapping The Car Crash Near Misses That No One Ever Sees

Every day in New York City, car crashes nearly happen. Cabs barely avoid clipping pedestrians. Cars on poorly signed roads all but careen into each other. A biker, somewhere, veers onto a sidewalk and out of the way of a speeding truck.

These almost-events are even more ubiquitous than actual accidents, and in the aggregate they're meaningful signs of an unsafe street. But in the eyes of city officials and police reports, such close calls are more or less invisible.

"The near-miss and minor crash data just doesn’t exist," says Jennifer So Godzeno, the associate director for community research at the New York advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. "There is no way to capture it because it is, by nature, unofficial."

Such data, though, might have real value in helping to head off future more costly crashes.