There have been 48 fatal crashes in Monroe County between 2019 and 2023. The city of Bloomington wants to get yearly traffic deaths to zero by 2039.
(Brandon Smith/IPB News)
Several Bloomington city departments have released a crash data portal they say will help the city plan safer streets and keep residents informed.
The data, published March 6, includes motor vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian collisions described in law enforcement reports from 2019 through 2023.
It was created by the city’s Planning and Transportation, Engineering, and Information and Technology Services Departments, all of which say the data will help the city reach its goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2039.
Where are the most frequent crashes?
There have been more than 17,200 crashes in Monroe County between 2019 and 2023.
Car crashes
In Monroe County, these streets have the most reported vehicle crashes:
Interstate 69
East Third Street
West State Road 46
West Third Street
South Walnut Street
For the roadways owned by the state Dept. of Transportation, there’s not much the city is able to change. Pat Martin, director of the city’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, said INDOT has ways to address areas with high crash rates.
“They're looking more at what I would call context-sensitive design,” he said. “In other words, what is the right design approach for this? Should the speed limits be reduced?”
The most common reasons listed for serious injury crashes are failure to yield to the right of way, running off the road and following too closely. Outside of Bloomington, the most common cause of crashes is from animals or objects on the road.
Pedestrian-involved crashes
There have been 250 pedestrian-vehicle collisions in the reported years, 81 of which have caused serious injury. The most dangerous streets for pedestrians in Monroe County are in downtown Bloomington and Indiana University’s campus.
The most crashes happened on Fridays. Most crashes happened between noon and 6 p.m.
Katie Gandhi is the transportation planner with the city’s Metropolitan Planning Organization.
“The crash dashboard is really…a way for us to make public, you know, data that's already being collected,” she said, “And in a way, it supports a lot of the projects that engineering and planning departments are already doing.”
The city said crash data from 2024 will be added later this year, and the dashboard will continue to update each year.
