The City of Kansas City has an online heat map of intersections with the most crashes. The map uses crash data from the City, so its accuracy is as good as the data that goes in. Regardless of the accuracy, as a personal injury lawyer handling car crash cases, the map's existence could have serious consequences for the City.
When you sue the City for a dangerous condition with its property, you have to show that the City knew about the condition in time to have made it safe. For example, if you trip and fall on a cracked City sidewalk, you have to show the City had previously received some kind of complaint about it, or that someone else had gotten hurt there, or that an inspector had seen it or made some note about it before.
With this map, if the crashes at these intersections are the result of unsafe road design or broken City equipment, signals, or signage, it can be used to show the City had notice of the problem. Its own data shows that these intersections are dangerous. This can be used to prove the City knew, or should have known, that something was wrong with these intersections.
I don’t know what the cause of the crashes was that went into this data, but when an intersection sees too many crashes, doesn’t that tell you that a change needs to be made at that intersection?
