Monday, January 14, 2013

Car vs. building

Last Thursday morning I was listening to KLIN radio.  Jack Mitchell and Dave Miller, the morning show hosts, were yucking it up over this accident, in which a disoriented driver turned a pizza restaurant into a drive through--even placing his order from the front seat after the crash.

Mr. Mitchell has a fascination with car/building crashes, and every time one of these hits the news, he launches into a monologue claiming that Lincoln drivers smash into buildings more than anywhere else on earth.  Thursday, he announced that he had started a Google Docs spreadsheet of these recent crashes, and he invited listeners to edit his work. In a rather short time, several additions were contributed, as people recollected crashes from the past, and in some cases even found links to related news stories.

I was pretty impressed at Jack's concept of a crowd-sourced spreadsheet, but I also knew that it would be woefully incomplete, since it is based on what contributors recall, and what a web search of news items returns. A tiny percentage of these crashes would ever make the paper or the newscast. I, on the other hand, have millions of records of police dispatches, and anyone who knows me or reads the Director's Desk for any length of time realizes that I am a database geek.  This was a challenge!

So while the coffee was brewing, I searched the past five years' crashes.  There is no data field that identifies car/building crashes, however, as these are included in the broader category of fixed object collisions.  My work around was to look at the "remarks" field in the traffic crash dispatch records.  This is the field containing the free-form shorthand comments keystroked by dispatchers at the time a call is received. I searched for three keywords: "house," "garage," and "building."

The search returned about 450 candidates, and I scanned through the table to identify and remove the false positives: cases that weren't really car building accidents, but in which the remarks field contained one of the keywords.  The net result was 196.  This is probably not entirely accurate, as my ten-minute search and scan likely missed a few false positives, and there would also be a few false negatives: actual car/building crashes in which none of those keywords appeared in the dispatch record.

Nonetheless, I think we can safely conclude that there have been around a couple hundred motor vehicle vs. building crashes that have come to the attention of the police in the past five years.  The big surprise, Jack, is that you've got way more of these than you ever dreamed in your wildest imagination.  The bad news is that your theory that Lincoln driver's smack brick more than anywhere else is completely without any basis.  Since Lincoln has a relatively low accident rate, it is likely that the subset of car v. building crashes is also low. No one has comparative data on such things, and there is no way to know how many buildings get creamed in Lubbock, Louisville, Laredo, or Lexington--only in Lincoln.

My favorite car building crash occurred sometime in the late 1970's or early 80's, when a reckless driver left the roadway and collided with the Fotomat in the parking lot of the Safeway at 23rd and O Street--now an Office Max store.  I wasn't a witness, but legend has it that the building virtually exploded. Luckily, it was after hours and unoccupied.  If you are under the age of 40, you'll probably need to find someone a little older to explain what a Fotomat was.




14 comments:

Steve said...

Isn't that where you could take pictures while you do your laundry?

ARRRRG!!!! said...

Sometimes things just get in the way.

Tim Allen said...

The BK just north of 84th and O St. had their door boarded up Saturday morning. I jokingly asked if someone drove into it and, to my non-surprise, someone had! They said it didn't make the news, though.

Anonymous said...

Photo Mat explosion? I was there that night. Best part? Free film and flashbulbs for all.....

Anonymous said...

…Meanwhile in Colorado…
http://www.krdo.com/news/Patrol-car-crashes-into-local-business/-/417220/18108088/-/i2d1xkz/-/index.html

Anonymous said...

…Meanwhile, in Colorado…
http://www.krdo.com/news/Patrol-car-crashes-into-local-business/-/417220/18108088/-/i2d1xkz/-/index.html

Anonymous said...

Although accident rates are lower in Lincoln, perhaps the target of choice is a building?

Not a sound hypothesis though, I generally do a better job missing stationary objects.

As brake/gas confusion contributes to car/building collisions, maybe there is also an epidemic of drivers hitting the brake unintentionally causing rear-end collisions.

Anonkim said...

In college I was taught that collisions occur ONLY between moving objects. Thus, two cars can collide (if both are moving) but unless the tree, building, bollard, etc. is moving, a vehicle cannot collide with it. I also feel that most times car crashes are not accidents; they are crashes,especially if alcohol is involved. And then there is the whole "by accident" or "on accident" controversy, which seems to be somewhat age dependent. Those under 35 tend to say "on accident" and older folks say "by accident."

Anonymous said...

Love to have that Dodge convertible!

H said...

At the dinner table one evening over the holidays, we were educating our college-aged children of the facts of life and Fotomoat. It was virtually inconceivable to them that you actually could not take a picture with your phone and look at it immediately. Extra points to mmy spouse, who stepped away from the table and returned in less than three minutes with a package of like new flash cubes.

Tom Casady said...

H-

Hah! Saving those flashcubes just in case the Instamatic makes a comeback?

I had a similar conversation with my daughter one day about pay phones. She was having a hard time wrapping her mind around life before the cellphone.

3:35,

I followed the link you posted to the news story about the sleepy Colorado Springs police officer crashing into the building. The business is "The Grow Store." I wonder what they sell there.

Steve said...

H

Try showing them a slide rule sometime, or describe finding a square root without a calculator.

Anonymous said...

For those living in the middle ages. They sell weed at that store. It is legal in Colorado and the economy is booming. They will have the best roads in the country.

Tom Casady said...

5:41,

Ahem, thank you Captain Obvious! BTW, the unemployment rate in Colorado is 7.7%. In Nebraska, it's 3.7% and the Governor announced his proposal yesterday to eliminate (that's right, eliminate) the individual and corporate State income tax.