1. (Also known as Team Blue Smiley
Faces, the Blue Meanies, etc.)

2.  Matthew MacVay
 Patrick Murray
 Colleen O’Dea
 Igor Putilov
 Erin Roll
 Alex Schechter

3.  A searchable database, and
a map, of motor vehicle
accidents around New
Jersey, assembled using raw
data from the state
Department of
Transportation website.

4.  Where can journalists and average
citizens go to find motor vehicle
accident data about their town or
their county, as well as the state?
 On the NJDOT website, there is lots
of raw accident data.
 However, all of that data is spread
out among five sets of massive, eye-
straining Notepad text files.
 Emphasis on eye-straining.

5.  We decided to merge as much data as
we could into one database.
 We attempted to pull the most
pertinent data – accident
dates/times, locations,
deaths/injuries, driver’s conditions,
vehicle types.
 With it, we decided to create a map
showing where the most accident-prone
roads and highways were.

6.  Asked, what are people going to want
to search for first?
 Some of the tools we used, or tried
to use: Mongo, Mapbox, Google Maps,
GitHub, JSON, Kibana, Elastic Search
 Downloaded all of the Notepad text,
and converted it into CSV files in
Excel and used it to help assemble
the database.

7.  Sheer volume: The accident data file
alone contained 3.2 million records.
 The raw data available isn’t exactly
user-friendly – there are lots of
gaps and errors that need fixing.
 On accident reports, the NJSP uses
numeric codes to describe factors
like weather conditions, road hazards
and alcohol tests.
 Internet bandwidth: the system kept
slowing down at times.

8.  The hours between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
seem to be a bad time to be on the
roads in New Jersey; a lot of
accidents seem to happen during that
time period.
 Counties with most accidents: Bergen,
Essex and Middlesex.
 Municipalities with most accidents
include Newark, Jersey City, the
Brunswicks.

9.  Citizens: What parts of your town or
city had the most accidents during a
certain year?
 Journalists: Keep track of accident
rates, try to spot trends in accident
causes/contributing factors
 Both: Being able to understand
accident rates and causes can help us
make the roads safer.