The new BikeMaps.org site is really cool!

It displays ICBC cycling incident data, but the best part of it is that you can add bike thefts, hazards, and your own near misses and collisions which will later be properly statistically and spatially analysed to show hot spots of cycling safety, risk, and crime. You can also see current cycling incident hotspots by clicking the “incident heatmap” check box in the right hand legend.

A useful feature for me is that if you sign up for a free account, you can set up an area on the map where if there are any new incidents, you will be sent an email. This will be useful for me to get email alerts for any incidents on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive in my work with Streets For Everyone campaigning for various improvements to the Drive which include a separated bike lane. I’ve also made an alert area for Main Street, which has an obvious need for a separated bike lane too.

This data and analysis from the BikeMaps project will help transportation planners see what’s working and what’s not with different cycling infrastructure types (or lack of thereof).

So get mapping to add bike thefts, hazards, and your own near misses and collisions by clicking the marker button at the left side of the map!