How to find out where people are dying in car crashes on Sacramento County streets near you

Rosa Vega’s office collects a disturbing amount of bodies from car crashes. She noticed that almost immediately when she started her new job as the Sacramento County coroner in 2022: Too many dead people, it seemed.

In a way, she was helpless. By the time her staff arrives, the victim is already dead.

“I’m very restricted to what I can do, right?” Vega said. “We’re death investigators. We don’t really have the jurisdiction or means to do anything beyond that.”

But Vega has an eye for data and a conviction that the public should know more about what the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office is doing. She launched a public database of car crash deaths in her jurisdiction that anyone can use to track deadly crashes.

“You can go on there as a reporter, as can somebody from a (community-based organization), or a lawmaker, policymaker, legislator,” she said. “Anybody that looks at this data probably has a different intent in what they want to look at the numbers for. The data is set up so that you can understand.”

The most basic takeaway, she said, is: “Wow, there’s a substantial amount of deaths.”

Vega also noticed a troubling pattern in the data.

“Not only do we have a lot of car accidents,” she said. “A lot of them were hit-and-runs, and a lot of them were pedestrians.”

On Thursday, Smart Growth America released a report that showed the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom metropolitan area had taken the 20th spot on the list of the most deadly places for pedestrians in the country. During the five-year period the report looked at, 377 pedestrians died, many of them in Sacramento County.

But, unlike the response to fatal fentanyl overdoses or domestic violence homicides, Vega said, the people who die in traffic crashes have no serious coordinated public response — the investigation into what happened is siloed.

So Vega counts the deaths and expects public officials to do something. On May 29, her database showed 66 vehicle-related deaths in the county this year. Over the last five years, the office had counted 1,210 deaths.

But for a deadly public health crisis, Vega said, it sure doesn’t seem to get much official attention.

Data tells a story of exceptionally dangerous roads

In addition to using the coroner’s data, members of the public can also register to use UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System for free to look at vehicle crashes in California neighborhoods. Under the “Tools” tab on the site, the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System or SWITRS GIS Map allows the public to look at a map of crashes near them. The map gives users the option to filter the results by date, location and “crash severity,” among other filters.

Combined with Vega’s more frequently updated tool — her data refreshes daily — the map provides a look at the pervasiveness of serious and fatal vehicle crashes. Sacramento County has many dangerous roads, where drivers are enabled to travel at high and often lethal speeds. A study in Accident Analysis & Prevention found that when a driver traveling 32.5 mph strikes a pedestrian, the average risk that the pedestrian will die is already 25%; that risk of death jumps to 50% at 40.6 mph and 75% at 48 mph.

In 2021, the California Office of Traffic Safety ranks Sacramento County as the third-worst in the state for traffic fatalities and injuries, beat only by Stanislaus County in second and San Francisco in first. The state agency considers Sacramento County the eighth-worst for pedestrians.

Vega worked in the coroner’s office in Santa Clara County — 36th on the Office of Traffic Safety’s ranking — before coming to the capital region. Even before she really had robust data, the contrast with her former county stood out with just a cursory review of her daily death log. Her initial impression is borne out by the numbers.

As of the last count in 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau said Vega’s old home county has 1.9 million people; Sacramento County, the agency said, has about 350,000 fewer residents. And yet UC Berkeley’s Transportation Injury Mapping System counted 99 more crash deaths in Sacramento County in 2022 than in its larger coastal neighbor. More people began to die in vehicle crashes in the capital’s county in 2015, and the deaths have significantly outpaced those in Santa Clara County every year since.

Traffic deaths leave a cost in grief

For Vega, these are not just statistics: The coroner’s office deals directly with the grieving families. She knows that behind every case number, there’s a life story.

Kate Johnston, a 55-year-old mother and an attorney for the California Department of Social Services, was riding her bike to work the morning she was fatally struck in an unprotected bike lane on 21st Street in January. Sam Dent, a 41-year-old father of two, was about to spend his visitation day with his 13-year-old son and was crossing the street toward the boy when he was fatally struck by a driver Feb. 26. When a driver fatally struck Aaron Ward — a lifelong Sacramento resident and a beloved older brother — in January, he was crossing the street on his way home from a gas station convenience store.

The coroner believes it’s critical to get more information out.

“The purpose of these datasets is to really educate the public on the deaths that are occurring in our county,” Vega said. “And then hopefully somebody will look at them and try to come up with a solution.”

The city of Sacramento has already identified patterns in the casualties of dangerous infrastructure. Mattie Nicholson, Jeffrey Blain, Terry Lane, David Rink and James C. Lind, Johnston, Dent and Ward were all struck and killed this year while walking or riding bikes on streets the city of Sacramento has previously identified as part of the dangerous “high-injury network.”

Sacramento has plans to prevent these deaths, and has made some progress in implementing its “Vision Zero” strategies to eliminate all traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2027. However, the city has struggled to fund these projects. At a recent meeting of the city’s Budget and Audit Committee, city council members said they would be hard-pressed to find $10 million for pedestrian and bike safety projects.

At the end of the Active Transportation Commission meeting the next week, a member of the commission listed off the names of pedestrians and cyclists killed in vehicle crashes this year.