StreetSmart

Safer streets start at the corner.

StreetSmart is ground intelligence: it reads Gainesville's roads to find the intersections that keep crashing, why, and the fix.

The problem

Most crashes happen where roads meet.

61%

of Gainesville crashes since January 2022 were at an intersection. That's 12,247 crashes.

411

intersections have had five or more crashes since 2022. The same corners, again and again.

It isn't just the drivers.

Every crash involves a mistake. But the same Gainesville drivers use every intersection in town, and a few crash far more than others carrying the same traffic. When one corner keeps producing the same crash, the corner is the cause.

Same traffic, different road

SW 34th St & SW Archer Rd has 60 crashes a year. Intersections with the same traffic and layout have 24.

Intersections with the same traffic24 a year
SW 34th St & SW Archer Rd60 a year

Same drivers, same number of cars. The 36 extra crashes a year come from the intersection itself.

Change the road, crashes drop

NW 69th Ter & W Newberry Rd: about 45% fewer crashes after the road was rebuilt.

Before
After

Same drivers. FDOT Newberry Road project: extended turn lanes on SR 26, widened the I-75 Exit 387 ramps, new traffic signals and street lighting. Measured against the change across the whole city.

The federal standard

The FHWA's Safe System Approach starts from a plain fact: people make mistakes, so roads should be built so a mistake doesn't cost a life.

Every fix StreetSmart suggests is on the FHWA's list of proven safety countermeasures.

We find the pattern, then the fix.

  1. Compare

    Each intersection is measured against corners with the same traffic, signals and layout.

  2. Diagnose

    Crash reports and street imagery show which kind of crash happens more than it should.

  3. Fix

    That pattern is matched to a federal Proven Safety Countermeasure built for it.

Fix 10 intersections. Address 358 crashes a year.

206 of those are more than similar intersections see. That excess is what each fix is designed to remove.

See the Red List
  1. 1SW 34th St & SW Archer RdDedicated right-turn lanes60a year
  2. 2SW 40th Blvd & SW Archer RdAppropriate yellow change intervals42a year
  3. 3SW 20th Ave & SW 62nd BlvdAppropriate yellow change intervals39a year