Street Story: a crowdsourcing platform to give input on street safety

Published on October 02, 2024

Street Story is an online platform created by UC Berkeley SafeTREC where residents and community members can provide input on transportation safety. The platform is used to engage the community in collecting data on traffic crashes, near-misses and other safety hazards along routes.

The platform is free to use by all California residents aged 13 years old and older. Street Story includes a survey about roadway experiences and sets of maps and data that can be downloaded.

"Communities, organizations and agencies can use the data collected from Street Story for needs assessments, education, planning, and evaluation efforts related to transportation safety," the website explains. "For instance, data about crashes, near misses, hazards and safe places to travel can inform a region’s public education campaign, community organizing, transportation planning efforts and more."

The data is collected for specific cities or counties and reports are created by mode (biking, e-bike, walking, e-scooter, etc.), by causes (failure to yield, speeding, lighting) for improvement suggestions.

The platform also provides resources on community engagement, for example flyer templates for community outreach and a starter guide on how to use the platform that also provides tips on community engagement, e.g. setting goals for the number of people to reach out to.

Watch a short video on how to use this tool.