The trends of Austin’s serious and fatal crashes involving children.

Race and Ethnicity:

Black children are three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash than white children in Austin. Hispanic children are about twice as likely as white children.

Time of Day:

The peak time of day for serious or fatal crashes is 2PM. This coincides with many elementary school release times here in Texas. The commute to school (6-8AM) is not as noticeable.

Mode:

Children are much more likely to be seriously injured or killed in pedestrian crashes. 30% of of all child serious/fatal crashes are pedestrian or bicyclist.

Location:

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A high concentration serious/fatal child crashes are in East Austin, St. John, Onion Creek, and Rundberg neighborhoods. Contrast that with few crashes in Central and West Austin.

The Data

Austin’s crash data is maintained by TxDOT and the City of Austin. See their Vision Zero Data viewer here

I’ve defined “child” as someone under the age of 16. For demographic data, I used the Texas Demographic Center’s Population Estimates for Travis County.

Code

Check out the Github repo here